Photography of the Modernist Cuisine Heads to Boston

Photo courtesy of Ryan Matthew Smith

This fall, as part of its new food initiative, the Museum of Science will be featuring an exhibit of the arresting photography from Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine. The six-volume tome (a whopping 2,438 pages) was a James Beard Award winner for Cookbook of the Year in 2012 and has since been called (along with its two successor books) “this decade’s most influential work about food” by Forbes.

Besides earning a culinary degree from the prestigious Ecolé de Cuisine La Varenne in Burgundy, France, Myhrvold did postdoctoral cosmology work with Stephen Hawking and served as chief technology officer at Microsoft. With the money he’s earned helping Bill Gates popularize software, Myhrvold has turned himself into one of the world’s most important food scientists.

The exhibit at the Museum of Science will encompass the Modernist Cuisine’s photographic exploration of Myhrvold and The Cooking Lab’s experiments in molecular gastronomy and food deconstruction. With macro lenses, microscopes, centrifuges, and a band-saw ripping through pots, ovens, and other kitchen appliances, Myhrvold and his massive staff (over 50 people) attempted to capture a dramatic new perspective on food. Dates for the “Photography of Modernist Cuisine” exhibit have yet to be announced, but we’ll continue to update as soon as more information becomes available.