For two days in January of 1972, the Everson hosted New York City-based artist John Fischer for an unusual exhibition and event centered on baking bread. Titled Love Me, Love My Bread, the program embraced the idea of bread as sculpture and baking as performance art. John Fischer, originally from Belgium, first experimented with creating “bread art” in New York City in the late 1960s, beginning with an invasion of the New York University student center. Fischer brought dozens of loaves of day old bread to NYU’s Loeb Student Center and distributed loaves of the bread onto tables, prompting a bread fight, an occasion that caught the attention of popular publications such as the Village Voice. Backed by the Homebakers Association, an organization dedicated to the art of bread making, Fischer persisted in spreading the word about bread art by arranging public bakes in cities such as Boston and New York. Fischer sought to bring art making outside of the studio and directly to the public for an interactive experience. Love Me, Love My Bread invited visitors into the Everson to make their own bread, which the Museum then baked and placed on display. Local companies Mercer Milling and Atlas Bakery provided materials and dough-mixing services, and Caffrey Steel Company built a temporary oven inside the Everson to bake the bread. Along with making their own bread, visitors explored an exhibition of Fischer’s bread sculptures and enjoyed New York City-based music and dance groups. The bake-in brought over four thousand visitors into the Museum, so many that they ran out of dough and instead had to provide loaves for the public to paint.
-Paige Nelligan, Curatorial Intern
