Visual Feast Created by Legendary Chef Opens at Nelson-Atkins
Kansas City, MO. Feb. 10, 2015
Ferran Adrià to Visit Kansas City During Exhibition
The first major museum exhibition to focus on the visualization and drawing practices of legendary chef Ferran Adrià opens at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City on Feb. 28, 2015. Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity; Visualizing the Mind of a Master Chef, emphasizes the role of visual media such as drawing, diagrams and graphic design in Adrià’s exploration of creativity. Adrià led elBulli, the Spanish restaurant widely considered the best restaurant in the world for more than two decades, to several Michelin stars, but closed the restaurant in July of 2011 to open a foundation that serves as a think-tank for creativity and innovation.
ElBulli served experimental cuisine, was only open six months during the year, and never served the same menu twice. During a typical 40-course meal, food was often served using specially designed tableware in order to present gastronomic inventions of unconventional form, such as foam or spheres. What looked like a piece of gold glass might have been crunchy Parmesan cheese. Foam, now a popular technique among chefs, was an invention brought to life by Adrià.
Now Adrià’s creative culinary discipline and thought process can be seen by the public in Notes on
Creativity. Curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York, the exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins opens Feb. 28 and closes Aug. 2. Adrià will also visit Kansas City for a weekend celebration of creativity, knowledge and culinary discipline, arriving March 28. He will give a public talk in Atkins Auditorium on Monday, March 30, at 5 p.m.
“Ferran Adrià has been celebrated as the most important avant-garde chef of the 21st century and now as head of his foundation, perhaps can be called a philosopher in the most classic sense of the term,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO & Director of the Nelson-Atkins. “This exhibition will push our visitors to stretch their minds about the nature of creativity.”
Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity opened at The Drawing Center in New York in January of 2015. Following the Nelson-Atkins, the international exhibition travels to the Minneapolis Institute of Art Sept. 17, 2015 – Jan. 3, 2016, and to Marres House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, The Netherlands, March 20 – June 12, 2016.
“The exhibition reveals the mind and working process of an extraordinarily inquisitive and creative thinker,” said Catherine Futter, The Helen Jane and R. Hugh “Pat” Uhlmann Senior Curator of Architecture, Design and Decorative Arts. “We are privileged to see why and how Adrià pushed the boundaries of our experience of food through constant research, experimentation, development and refinement. All the senses are engaged in cooking, and in this exhibition we are allowed to see the visual manifestations of Adrià’s creativity and experimentation. No other chef has taken such steps to delve into the history of gastronomy, record his findings, create a new language about food and share these efforts as Adrià has.
Food culture, like any form of culture, requires outliers, and Ferran Adrià is its provocateur. As one of the most important avant-garde chefs of the twenty-first century, Adrià expands culinary boundaries with knowledge and wit, transforming the art of food into an art form all its own.
Hundreds of notebooks have been filled with concepts, ideas, collaged photographs, and loose sketches for new dishes for elBulli. More straightforward creative methods in the form of lists, tables of ingredients, and cooking methods have also been used to assemble ingredients and conceptualize new ways of cooking. The use of drawing to articulate cuisine (as both product and concept) highlights a creative model that is always in flux and constantly shifting. Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity charts the origins of this innovator’s intellectual and philosophical ideas about gastronomy that have forever changed how we understand food.
These ideas are presented as wall graphics, framed prints, models and product designs. A central element of the exhibition is a large, walk-in cube that, on its exterior, features large-scale photographic reproductions of the elBulli kitchen during service—conveying the scale, intense focus and energy of the creation and assembly of the complex dishes. The interior of the cube is lined with “working boards” that lean against large-scale documentary photographs of the elBulli archive in Barcelona. The boards were used in the elBulli atelier to document and organize research, menu development and photography. They include drawings from the 2006 and 2008 elBulli menus, abstract plating diagrams and drawings from Adrià’s Peach Melba project.
A series of vitrines display other aspects of the creative process and collaboration at elBulli. Some of the cases exhibit a selection of notebooks documenting menu development, product taxonomies and personal notes as well as plasticine food models. Other cases display drawings and prototypes related to elBulli’s dishware, utensils, menus and graphic identity. There are also displays of architectural drawings and a model of the proposed elBulli Foundation headquarters.
For the first four weekends, an exhibition ticket includes an enhanced experience with Kansas City’s top food purveyors, with tastings and reflections on culinary creativity.
Feb. 28 and March 1: Christopher Elbow of Christopher Elbow Artisan Chocolates
March 7 and 8: Danny O’Neill of The Roasterie Air-Roasted Coffee
March 14 and 15: Mark Friend of Farm to Market Bread Co.
March 21 and 22: Sarah Hoffman of Green Dirt Farm
On March 5 at 6 p.m., Brett Littman will give a talk in Atkins Auditorium about the development of the exhibition.
Events during Chef Adrià’s stay in Kansas City:
Sunday March 29
7-9 p.m. Casual BBQ dinner with Adrià for chefs and donors. Book-signing after the event.
Monday March 30
8-9:30 a.m. Breakfast with Adrià for the Nelson-Atkins Business Council, innovative thinkers, and purveyers doing weekend programs.
11:30 a.m. Brief tour and lunch at Culinary Center at Johonson County Community College followed by tour of Boys Grow. 5-6 p.m. A public talk by Chef Ferran Adrià in Atkins Auditorium.
6-7 p.m. Cocktails in Kirkwood Hall, exhibition open to the public.
7 p.m. Celebrity chefs prepare dinner for Chef Adrià and high-level donors.
ABOUT FERRAN ADRIÀ
Ferran Adrià Acosta was born in 1962 in Barcelona, Spain. In April 1984, Adrià joined the team of elBulli in the position of Chef de Partie. By 1987, Adrià began to use ingredients, techniques, and regional influences that reinterpreted “haute cuisine.” Until 1993, the Mediterranean-style defined much of the cuisine of elBulli and exerted an important influence on the Catalan and Spanish cuisine of this period. However, beginning in 1990, Adrià incorporated tapas, spoons, skewers, jellies, and savory ice cream—concepts that reached their full expression by 1994. From that time on, three pillars characterized the cuisine of elBulli: continual research of new cooking techniques; an emphasis on the role of the senses in the art of creating and eating; and the sixth sense, that is to say, the role of reason and reflection on the act of eating. Adrià’s trademark cuisine was served to the elBulli diner in the form of an extensive tasting menu, which grew to more than 40 dishes in the final years of elBulli.
Beginning in the late 1980s, Adrià established a culinary season that was divided into two parts: six months of service in the restaurant and six months of research and creativity. The latter activity was carried out in different locations until 2000, when elBullitaller was opened in Barcelona. This change marked an evolution in the cuisine of elBulli, leading to the bestowal of three Michelin stars in 1997, and the title of “Best Restaurant in the World” by Restaurant Magazine in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. The accolade “Chef of the Decade” was presented to Adrià in 2010 by the same magazine.
In 2011, Adrià decided to close the restaurant to transform it into a foundation, which opens in 2015 and aims to preserve the legacy of elBulli, including its installations and its archive. The original elBulli building in Cala Montjoi will be redesigned by Spanish architect Enric Ruiz Geli, who will create a space that is sustainable, ecological and integrated into the landscape. A permanent exhibition will be staged to present a narrative that outlines the restaurant’s history and culinary evolution. In addition, this space will provide facilities for activities related to the process of creativity with a team that will publish its research on the internet.
Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity. Curated by Brett Littman. Organized by The Drawing Center, NY. Dom Pérignon is the presenting partner of Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity. Additional support is provided by the Institut Ramon Llull, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and Lavazza.
In Kansas City, the exhibition is supported by Ann and Kenneth Baum, Paul DeBruce, Christy and Bill Gautreaux, and Shirley and Barnett Helzberg, Jr. Additional support has been provided by Mary and Tom Bloch, Nancy and Rick Green, the Campbell-Calvin Fund & Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions and H&R Block.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
The Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America’s finest art museums. The Nelson-Atkins serves the community by providing access and insight into its renowned collection of more than 33,500 art objects and is best known for its Asian art, European and American paintings, photography, modern sculpture, and new American Indian and Egyptian galleries. Housing a major art research library and the Ford Learning Center, the Museum is a key educational resource for the region. The institution-wide transformation of the Nelson-Atkins has included the 165,000-square-foot Bloch Building expansion and renovation of the original 1933 Nelson-Atkins Building.
The Nelson-Atkins is located at 45th and Oak Streets, Kansas City, MO. Hours are Wednesday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Thursday/Friday, 10 a.m.–9 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m.; Sunday, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Admission to the museum is free to everyone. For museum information, phone 816.751.1ART (1278) or visit nelson-atkins.org/.