“The pleasure of cooking, of taking care of oneself and others at the table is a social act.” This is the manifesto sentence structuring the exhibition itinerary of the new exhibition “GUSTO! Italians at the table. 1970-2050” at the M9 museum in Mestre. Curated by Massimo Montanari – professor of Food History at the University of Bologna and founder of the Master’s Degree in Food History and Culture – and Laura Lazzaroni – journalist, writer and expert on bread and wheat – the event is part of the new calendar of temporary exhibitions that will animate the third floor of the museum, according to a three-year plan devised by Scientific Director Luca Molinari and will be open to the public from 25 March to 25 September 2022.

“The exhibition that M9 wanted,” explained Molinari during the presentation of the show, “is a real workshop, in which we have identified, together with our curators, the scientific committee, and a large group of experts and institutions, a long series of micro-stories that can help us understand the richness and density of Italian taste for food, the complexity of the environmental and social ecosystem to which it is connected and the potential it possesses as a vital resource to be explored to look to future challenges.”

The itinerary structured by Gambardellarchitetti, with the graphic collaboration of Camuffolab, develops through an emotional journey to discover ingredients, recipes, history, and Italian gastronomic curiosities, revealing a real atlas of taste from 1970 to a hypothetical 2050.  

This opens up eight Rooms of Taste, thematic “bubbles” organized by theme through images, videos, iconic objects, and testimonials. Gusto italiano (Italian taste) is the first, where a monumental periodic table of ingredients collects over 1800 products from the peninsula. Here the appliance brand Neff showcases Slide&Hide ovens, synonymous with passion for cooking, design character and technological reliability.

With Gusto nella casa, on the other hand, we discover the evolution of habits and customs through an exclusive collaboration with designer Giulio Iacchetti. An island of iconic Italian design objects recounts culinary habits, collected in unmistakably Italian verbs: drain, grate, season, uncork, get help, make coffee, have a drink. Iconic objects that have marked the history of design appear here, from Aldo Rossi’s La cupola coffee pot to Alessandro Mendini’s Anna G. corkscrew.

Gusto fuori casa (Taste outside home) links contemporary art cuisine to the ritual of large collective tables, from village festivals to out-of-town picnics. This section also includes faithful reproductions - in plastic materials - of signature and traditional Italian dishes, from Gualtiero Marchesi’s Risotto con foglia d’oro to Davide Scabin’s Cyber egg.

Then, in the Gusto nel viaggio (Taste on the journey) room, a video montage created by Davide Rapp brings together sequences of foreign films and advertisements that repropose Italian food according to typical Italian stereotypes. In addition, a collaboration between Campari and M9 illustrates the advertising graphics of the brand that has taken the Italian aperitif around the world; Fortunato Depero’s famous posters of Bitter from the 1930s and Lorenzo Mattotti’s more recent ones for Aperol add luster to the section.

In the central room of Gusto dell’incontro (Taste of encounter), taste acts as a cultural bridge protecting local territorial variety in an expansive key. There is talk of the southernisation of cuisine – through the symbol of spaghetti with tomato sauce that has conquered the North – and video stories of heroic agriculture that engage young people and citizens in the Campagna Amica project. Closing the exhibition are two rooms linked to the future of cooking: from reflection on food waste (Gusto di oggi, Taste of Today), to current trends with an eye on new technologies (Gusto del futuro, Taste of the Future). In the room, Siemens, Europe’s leading company in built-in appliances, proposes a new model of intelligent kitchen such as the recent Prototype the Future, which involved the students of the Space Design course of the Two-year Specialisation Course in Interior Design at NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, led by architect Francesco Librizzi. It also shows astronauts’ meals with a focus on Samantha Cristoforetti’s 2022 mission, as well as EcoLogicStudio’s installation on the cultivation of spirulina algae and aeroponic culture by Zero Farms.

“We have built a large house made up of rooms that tell the story of Italian taste through the agricultural landscape, the biodiversity of products, home cooking, restaurants and markets, tables and street food, design and migration flows, environmental and health challenges, space engineering and new supply chains, and school projects,” explain Lazzaroni and Montanari. “We wanted an evocative exhibition, cultured and profound, unruly and amusing, full of transversal suggestions - of love and life. To explain not so much the doctrine as the spirit of a people who, even when they are not in shape, think of the scent of a lemon and know how to smile. And takes pizza into space”.