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Umami*: Food and Art Festival is a non-profit, biennale event created in 2008. The festival works in partnership with other organizations in New York City to foster collaborations between artists and food professionals. By approaching food through art, Umami frames it as stimulating and inspiring, a positive approach leading to innovative solutions to some of the national challenges we face today. The festival features events that are interdisciplinary and collaborative, creating an interchange of ideas and stirring debate about the role of food and art in our society, creating long-term collaborative relationships between organizations and individuals from different fields.
Umami encourages art based in everyday life and materials, illustrating that art can be found anywhere and can be produced at any time with the simplest means. The festival’s key objectives are (1) to use food as a common thread to look at and integrate art into daily life and (2) to broaden the horizon of food as an artistic medium.
In particular, the festival encourages non-commercial, time-based art and encourages artists who work in non-traditional media.
The festival’s location in New York City allows us to take advantage of the city’s unmatched resources as a center for artistic creation as well as culinary production.
* Umami is the fifth taste sensed by the human tongue (in addition to sweet, salty, bitter and sour). Umami is a Japanese word meaning “savory” or “meaty” and applies to a sensation common in meats, cheese and other protein-rich foods or to “earthy” foods such as mushrooms and soy sauce.
Umami festival has merged with the NY Food Museum.Â