“What we think or dream or do is determined by what we eat and what we drink.” —“The Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine”
Guggenheim members at the Fellow Associate level and above are invited to participate in a dinner inspired by the Italian Futurists’ strong beliefs on dining and nutrition designed and hosted by cookbook author and restaurateur Mimmetta Lo Monte in the museum’s Wright Restaurant.
Ms. Lo Monte and Vivien Greene, Guggenheim Senior Curator, 19th- and Early 20th-Century Art and curator of Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe, will introduce dishes based on recipes from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1932 Futurist Cookbook, served with accompanying wines.
Futurism was intended to be not just an artistic idiom but an entirely new way of life. The “Manifesto of Futurist Cuisine,” written by Marinetti and Fillia (Luigi Colombo) and first published in the Gazzetta del Popolo in Turin in 1930, laid out a number of instructions in a “scheme for a complete rethinking of what we eat.” Primary among these was “to be rid of pasta, that idiotic gastronomic fetish of the Italians.” Aiming to establish “a diet in keeping with an increasingly airborne, faster pace of life,” the manifesto laid out 11 requirements for the perfect meal, including harmony between table setting and food, the invention of food sculptures, and the use of scents, poetry, and music, as well as scientific instruments during preparation.
In keeping with the multidisciplinary spirit of Futurism, the dinner will follow a 7 pm performance of FUTURISMUSIC by pianist Daniele Lombardi, which will take place in the museum’s rotunda while guests view the Italian Futurism exhibition.
Tickets for the dinner are available to Guggenheim members at the Fellow Associate ($250) level and above for $200 per person, including the concert. Space is extremely limited and reservations are offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
Mimmetta Lo Monte is an acclaimed Italian food specialist from Palermo, Sicily, who lives between Palermo and Washington, D.C. She is the author of two cookbooks, La Bella Cucina and Mimmetta Lo Monte’s Classic Sicilian Cooking. The first is a primer on Italian cooking written when the prevailing trends in Italian food in the United States leaned to Italian-American recipes rather than authentic cuisine. The second book, for more advanced chefs and for anyone interested in Italian culture, collects many old recipes from the nineteenth-century, culled from a cookbook of her grandfather’s, as well as gathered traveling from tiny villages and remote monasteries in Sicily. For many years Ms. Lo Monte held a popular cooking course at her home in Washington. She went on to run a successful catering business and eventually had a restaurant of her own, Mimmetta’s, also in Washington. She has been a contributor to Bon Appétit and culinary publications on regional Italian cuisine and was the spokesperson for Classico Sauce, appearing nationally.
Tuesday, July 15, 8 p.m. $200 – $250