Set the Table: The Art of Nourishment is a group exhibition spanning all of the Dairy Arts Center’s gallery spaces, exploring the dinner table as a central site of cultural, ecological, and artistic discourse. The table emerges as both a physical and symbolic nexus—of home and heritage, agriculture and environment, family and domesticity, culinary practice, and the broader systems that shape how and what we eat.
The exhibition considers nourishment in its many forms—biological, cultural, ecological, emotional, creative, and communal. Around the table, people converge, and relationships to land, labor, and one another are continually shaped. Food is revealed as more than sustenance: it is memory, ritual, labor, power, and connection. Grounded in both local and global perspectives, Set the Table is rooted in Colorado’s agricultural landscape and Boulder’s distinct culinary culture, while reflecting on how the personal and the local are inseparable from global systems. The exhibition engages questions of environmental responsibility, food access, sustainability, gender, economy, and the entangled networks that sustain human life.
Working across installation, photography, and interdisciplinary practices, the artists both literally and conceptually “set the table,” creating immersive, table-based works that reimagine spaces of dining and gathering. These works reveal the often unseen connections between soil and plate, hand to hand, and past to present. Here, food and nourishment emerge as artistic and creative acts—forms through which care, identity and belonging are expressed. Set the Table invites us to linger in the act of gathering—to consider what it means to nourish and be nourished, and to recognize the table not only as a place to eat, but as a space where culture is created and community is continually made.
It wouldn’t be an exhibition about food without food, so Set the Table is accompanied by a dynamic roster of (delicious) public programs that bring the exhibition to life:
Opening Reception — May 15, 5–8 PM
Celebrate the opening with an evening of art, food, and community—bringing people together around shared nourishment in collaboration with MAD Agriculture.
Boulder Eats at the Dairy: Panel Discussion & Communal Supper — June 4, 5:30–8:30 PM
Boulder Eats at the Dairy highlights Boulder’s food culture and heritage in collaboration with the Museum of Boulder and Community Table Kitchen. The night features a panel of local restaurateurs moderated by John Lehndorff, followed by a communal supper with chef-curated tasting stations—where delicious food, storytelling, and community meet at the table.
Tickets: $80, including panel discussion and dinner, get your tickets HERE
Artist Talk — June 17, 5–8 PM
Hear directly from exhibiting artists and explore the ideas behind the work, with audience Q&A.
Tickets: Free but RSVP required due to limited capacity (LINK COMING)
Set the Table: Immersive Dinner and Art Retreat— July 22, 5–9 PM
An intimate, multi-sensory farm-to-table dining experience where food and art become one. Enjoy a five-course meal by Forage Sisters celebrating Colorado’s seasonal bounty, alongside a guided mini art retreat led by Kristen Abbott (Schoolhouse Studios)—inviting guests into a playful, creative experience where the gathering itself becomes a living artwork.
Tickets: $150, including 5 course dinner and mini art retreat, capacity limited to 40, get your tickets HERE