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American Impressionist

American Impressionist

K. Dempwolf an American Impressionist

Tasty Delight: The American Museum Of Natural History's 'Chocolate' Show Is Full Of Empty Calories.

The "chocolate" exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History (on view till Sept. 4) is no surprise, a trifle. It softens in your mouth, not in your grey matter. Charmingly undemanding (if dear at $17 a pop), it is the disposable summer blockbuster of museum exhibits, an academic moneymaker targeted at the sweet-toothed baby in us all.

I've got to admit that I become that baby when it comes to dark chocolate. After following the floor stickers ("This way to Chocolate!") to a Wonka-esque gold-scripted arch, I finished up winding through a maze of basic history. I made my way through the exhibit dutifully taking notes, but one thought pulsed inside my one track mind : At the end of this exhibit, there is a chocolate cafeteria. A chocolate cafeteria. A chocolate cafeteria. Around the time Spain was spreading the sweet stuff from the Mayans to Europe, I gave in and cheated.

I scuttled through the exhibit, past the antique candy wrappers, and bought a giant bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the start. I was careful to hide the candy bar in my coat as I past the curators since this was fully against the guidelines. No-one wants tourists smearing Mars bars on the museum's spotless glass cases. But as a critic, I thought it was important that I work with all my senses.

Loaded up on the sweet stuff, I found out that the exhibit does indeed cover the basics of chocolate history. You've got your wrinkly cocoa pods, your Mayan pottery, your business history of the cocoa trade. You have your antique pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Better you've got your photo of an immense Easter bunny, circa 1890. 5 feet tall, the rabbit possesses the chalky grace of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, god-like, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label exposes Strohecker is "the pop of the chocolate Easter bunny"pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.

Some of the exhibit's historic sections were a little on the imprecise side. "Nearly one hundred years passed before other EU states caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish trying to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did reports of chocolate spread? We're not sure." But there's just about enough background to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without targeting too intently : The traditional Mayans offered the god Quetzalcoatl ritual chocolate that was "a deep blood-red color." By 1930, there were forty thousand different types of chocolate bars. Chocolate contains the love-chemical phenylethylamine. (Though the poster rather primly contended that there is "no conclusive evidence it stimulates the libido.") And do not feed your dog chocolate, it can be deadly, and it is a waste of good chocolate.

At one or two junctures, the facts-to-dramatics ratio dipped too low for even phenylethylamine-addled me. In one alcove, visitors find a film screen showing the swirly legend "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." This silent-movie caption is instantly followed by a video illustration : a giant brown tongue of melted chocolate pours down from the top of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That is the full extent of the display.

More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming guarantees of delight. "Keep the party perkin '! Lady, take a bow! Serve 'em nuggets, serve 'em chips! Glorious and wow!" reads one. Taken together, the wrappers form a history of cultural trends, from Brach's Swingtime (named after the dance craze) to the Mr. Gigantic Shaq Snaq (named after the rings player). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mold, a hand-carved coffin in the shape of a cocoa pod, and a snack machine that once dispensed Hershey bars for a penny each. There isn't much sociological depth hereI found myself thinking about oddball subjects the curators could have covered, like the way chocolate imagery has been utilized to refer to black skin or the entire Cathy cartoon idea that women have some special biological need for chocolate, but a number of these tchotchkes are fun to have a look at.