LAUNCHING what new NGA director Gerard Vaughan called calls “a reformulation of the Sculpture Garden restaurant”, media and gallery staff today joined food mover and shaker Stephanie Alexander for a light lunch that put together food and art.
Keebaugh, Alexander and Vaughan among the produce
Long hidden behind the Fujiko Nakaya ‘Fog sculpture’ at the NGA, the restaurant is now enlivened by rows of pots overflowing with tomato, strawberry, basil, parsley and other plants, all giving promise of freshness in the cuisine.
Vaughan, flanked by Bruce Keebaugh from The Big Group organisation that handles catering for the gallery, praised the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, which he said had helped create a new ambience for the restaurant, drawing a parallel between the 700 schools now participating in the foundation’s program and the 75,000 young people who took part in the NGA’s education program.
With a joint commitment to nourishing food and great art, Vaughan said the new venture had huge potential for persuading young people that the Gallery was “the place to come along to.”
As part of a summer pop-up venture that will see patrons of the restaurant getting close-up and personal to tomato, basil, coriander and other plants, the Big Group, we heard, would be donating one dollar for every meal bought to Alexander’s foundation.
Stephanie Alexander
In describing the potential of the “green things and lovely food,” Alexander described her foundation’s approach, in which young people were introduced in the food as “nutrition by stealth.” What was more, she said, surrounding young people with “lovely freshness…works a treat.” Although she acknowledged the huge success of the kitchen gardens around Australia, she wanted more and more schools in the ACT to participate.
Light lunch at the restaurant
Keebaugh said The Big Group was “thrilled with this project,” describing how staff had been digging around in the veggie garden for the past month watching the plants grow.
It added a note of credibility to the Gallery, he thought, and although some might be new restaurant as a “funny little pop-up summer activity,” those with pressurised saw it as an exciting place – “you see it in the eyes of young people.”
Fog sculpture and pond viewed through the plants
Later Keebaugh told “Citynews” he thought it unlikely they’d open the Gallery during winter, which was just too hard.
The pop-up the Sculpture Garden restaurant, behind the National Gallery of Australia, will run until April 2015.
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