Dallas Museum of Art Partners with the University of Texas at Dallas to Teach Students about the Senses
--Executive Chef of Seventeen Seventeen to “Teach” by Cooking --
DALLAS, January 30, 2009 — The Dallas Museum of Art is delighted to partner with the University of Texas at Dallas for the sixth consecutive year to offer an interdisciplinary honors seminar for undergraduate students. This year’s seminar is inspired by the current exhibition at the DMA Take your time: Olafur Eliasson and will focus on “The Senses” with a special class hosted by Executive Chef Jason Ferraro from the DMA’s Seventeen Seventeen Restaurant.
The students will spend their three-hour class on February 5 with Chef Ferraro in the DMA’s Seventeen Seventeen Restaurant, learning about the art of cooking with the senses. Ferraro will demonstrate some of the techniques he uses and will also provide the students with an opportunity to cook with the senses themselves.
Chef Ferraro's style is one that exhibits global influences that allow him to learn flavor profiles and basics of cooking from other cultures and apply them in a new approach to food. Chef Ferraro likes to challenge his guests by evoking their senses and sense of memory by creating different textures, flavors, temperatures and scent to enhance a theatrical dining experience.
“I am very pleased that the Museum asked me to take part in such an important class for our local college students,” says Executive Chef Jason Ferraro. “To combine visual art, literature, dance and now cooking to help them experience the senses in all the means possible is a wonderful thing and a great way to incorporate my work with the mission of the Museum.”
Students enrolled in the honors seminar meet at the Museum for three hours every Thursday afternoon from January to April to learn from experts from a variety of perspectives, including DMA educators and curators and UT Dallas professors. While this year’s seminar will focus on “The Senses,” previous years have covered a multitude of aspects from the DMA’s collections and special exhibitions, including last year’s course on creativity, themed on the 2008 opening of the DMA’s new Center for Creative Connections.
“We are delighted that Chef Jason Ferraro is willing to share his talents with the UT Dallas students,” said Gail Davitt, The Dallas Museum of Art League Director of Education. “The students’ exploration of the senses will be enhanced by his approach to cooking as creating a multisensory work of art. This innovative and interactive experience will add a wonderful dimension to the course.”
This year’s seminar hosts twelve students from UT Dallas and is organized by Dennis Kratz, Dean of Arts & Humanities at UT Dallas, and Molly Kysar, Head of Teaching Programs at the Dallas Museum of Art. The DMA also offers a Summer Seminar annually in conjunction with UT Dallas. This is a graduate-level course for teachers and they meet at the DMA for two weeks in June to explore the same topic as the spring honors course.
About the Dallas Museum of Art
Located in the vibrant Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) ranks among the leading art institutions in the country and is distinguished by its innovative exhibitions and groundbreaking educational programs. At the heart of the Museum and its programs is its encyclopedic collection, which encompasses more than 23,000 works and spans 5,000 years of history, representing a full range of world cultures. Established in 1903, the Museum today welcomes more than 700,000 visitors annually and acts as a catalyst for community creativity, engaging people of all ages and backgrounds with a diverse spectrum of programming, from exhibitions and lectures to concerts, literary readings and dramatic and dance presentations.
The Dallas Museum of Art is supported in part by the generosity of Museum members and donors and by the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas/Office of Cultural Affairs and the Texas Commission on the Arts.