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 until Sept. 4) is no surprise, a trifle. It melts in your mouth, not in your grey matter. Charmingly undemanding (if dear at $17 a pop), it's the expendable summer hit of museum exhibits, an academic moneymaker directed at the sweet-toothed baby in us all.

I've got to admit that I become that toddler 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 thru a maze of basic history. I made my way thru the exhibit dutifully taking notes, but one thought pulsed within my one track mind : At the end of this exhibit, there's a chocolate cafeteria. A chocolate cafe. A chocolate cafeteria. Round the time Spain was spreading the sweet stuff from the Mayans to Europe, I gave in and cheated.

I scuttled thru the exhibit, past the antique candy wrappers, and got a giant bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the beginning. I was careful to cover the candy bar in my coat as I past the curators since this was completely against the rules. Nobody wants tourists smearing Mars bars on the museum's spotless glass cases. But as a critic, I thought it was imperative 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 industrial history of the cocoa trade. You have your antique pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Better you have your photograph of an immense Easter bunny, circa 1890. Five feet tall, the rabbit possesses the chalky dignity of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, god-like, beside it is its creator, Robert L. Strohecker. The label explains Strohecker is "the father of the chocolate Easter bunny"pretty much the best epithet one could hope for in this life.

Some of the exhibit's historical sections were a little on the imprecise side. "Nearly a hundred years passed before other European countries caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish attempting to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did reports of chocolate spread? We aren't sure." But there's just enough background to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without focusing too intently : The ancient Mayans offered the god Quetzalcoatl ritual chocolate that was "a deep blood-red color." By 1930, there were 40,000 different kinds of chocolate bars. Chocolate contains the love-chemical phenylethylamine. (Though the placard rather primly asserted that there is "no definitive proof it excites the libido.") And don't feed your dog chocolate, it can be fatal, and it's a waste of good chocolate.

At one or two junctures, the facts-to-dramatics proportion 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 immediately followed by a video illustration : a gigantic brown tongue of melted chocolate pours down from the apex of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That's the full extent of the display.

More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming promises of pleasure. "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. Big Shaq Snaq (named after the hoops player). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mould, 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's not that much sociological depth hereI found myself thinking about oddball subjects the curators could have covered, like the way chocolate images has been utilized to refer to black skin or the whole Cathy cartoon notion that women have some special biological need for chocolate, but some of these tchotchkes are fun to have a look at.

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