Tasty Pleasure : The North 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. Four ) isno surprisea trifle. It melts in your mouth, not in your grey matter. Charmingly undemanding ( if dear at $17 a pop ), it's the throwaway summer smash hit of museum exhibits, an academic moneymaker directed at the sweet-toothed babe in us all.

And here I have to admit that i'm that baby. After following the floor stickers ( "This way to Chocolate!" ) to a Wonka-esque gold-scripted arch, I noticed myself winding thru a maze of history litejust enough info to get the point, nothing too taxingdutifully taking notes but with one thought pulsing inside my miniscule lizard brain : At the end of this exhibit, there's a chocolate cafe. A chocolate cafe. A dark chocolate cafe. 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 purchased a huge bar of organic dark chocolate. Then I snuck back to the start. Now, speaking precisely, this is illegaland damn it, I support following the guidelines. Nobody wants travellers smearing Mars bars on the museum's spotless glass cases. But as a critic, I believed it was imperative that I work with all my senses.

Loaded up on the sweet stuff, I realized that the exhibit does indeed cover the basics. You have your wrinkly cocoa pods, your Mayan pottery, your industrial history of the cocoa trade ( with a pleasant emphasis on social justice ). You have got your shocking pellet of 1,500-year-old chocolate. Even better you've got your photograph of a gigantic Easter bunny, circa 1890. 5 feet tall, the rabbit has got the chalky grace of an Egyptian sarcophagus, and it stands, golemlike, 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 obscure side. "Nearly a hundred years passed before other European states caught the chocolate craze," read one display's label. "Were the Spanish making an attempt to keep chocolate to themselves? And how did stories of chocolate spread? We are not sure." But there's sufficient background to keep an intellectual candy-lover occupied. Among stuff I learned without targeting too intently : The ancient 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 demanded that there's "no conclusive evidence it excites the libido." ) And do not feed your dog chocolateit can be deadly, and it's a waste of good chocolate.

At a few junctures, the facts-to-dramatics ratio dipped too low for even phenylethylamine-addled me. In one alcove, visitors find a production screen displaying 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 pinnacle of the screen, followed by a spinning drift of sugar. Then the solemn words appear again : "Chocolate meets sugar in Spain." That's the whole extent of the display.

More successful is the panoply of defunct candy wrappers, each beaming guarantees of pleasure. "Keep the party perkin '! Lady, take a bow! Serve 'em nuggets, serve 'em chips! Wonderful 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. Giant Shaq Snaq ( named after the hoops player ). There's also a telephone-shaped chocolate mold, a hand-carved coffin in the shape of a cocoa pod, and a dispensing machine that once dispensed Hershey bars for a penny each. There isn't much sociological depth hereI found myself brooding 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 ladies have some special biological need for chocolate, but a few of these tchotchkes are fun to have a look at.

Still, listening to my fellow exhibit-goers was often more entertaining than gazing at yet one more cocoa pod. Of course , this is a subject on which everyone seems to be an expert. "I would like to live in a chocolate house!" bursted out one thirtysomething fellow. A couple to my left started earnestly discussing the difference between hot cocoa and hot chocolate. And a bescarved French matron, gazing up at a massive screen displaying a minidocumentary about the modern manufacturing process, started reminiscing in great detail about the famous I love Lucy chocolate-making scene.
Piranha Knock Out Video

We thank you taking the time to visit our website
and hope that we were able to assist you in your search for the information that you are looking for.
We do realize that with many articles written, it is possible
and even likely that you will find errors along the way.
We would appreciate you using the "contact us" page to let us know if you come across any mistakes
in our articles or if you simply have some ideas for articles that you would like to see in the future.
Thanks again for taking the time to visit,
we hope you have enjoyed it and hope that you will visit us again someday very soon.