Skip to main content

Feast & Fast

This exhibition is now in our archive.

Food defines us as individuals, communities, and nations: we are what we eat and, equally, what we don’t eat. When, where, why, how and with whom we eat are crucial to our identity. Feast & Fast presents novel approaches to understanding the history and culture of food and eating.

This research‐led multi-sensory exhibition will showcase hidden and newly conserved treasures from the Fitzwilliam and other collections, and features four spectacular historical reconstructions with food at their centre, including a Jacobean sugar banquet, a European feasting table and a Georgian confectioner’s workshop. It will tease out many contemporary and controversial issues – such as the origins of food and food security, over-consumption in times of austerity, and our relationship with animals and nature – thereby linking the past with our present, and encouraging visitors to question and rethink our relationship with food.

To complement Feast & Fast, a flamboyant 4-metre tall pineapple installation created by Bompas and Parr – experts in multi-sensory experience design – will be displayed on the Museum’s front lawn for the duration of the exhibition and illuminated at night.

Selected objects

An image of Tureen

Tureen

C.3 & A & B-1958

An image of Drawing

Drawing

3710

An image of Drawing

Drawing

PD.736-1963

Explore our films

Curators and experts behind this exhibition

Sign up to our emails

Be the first to hear about our news, exhibitions, events and more…

Sign up