It's no secret that we live in the age of digital images. If you have a smart phone, you can search for an apartment or find true-ish love - perhaps both all by looking at an image. While the technology is new, people have used the content of images to create narratives since the first cave paintings.
James Neinhaus and Irwin Goldman are professors in UW-Madison's Deptartment of Horticulture. They say that it is difficult to find historical documentation of fruits and vegetables that could be used to trace their evolution.
Their search for images lead them to what some would call an unlikely place: The Chazen Museum in Madison.
Contributor Gianofer Fields spoke with Ninehaus and Goldman about the intersection of art history and horticulture and what we can glean from examining works of art.
Goldman says for him...it all started with a carrot:
Gianofer Fields studies material culture at UW-Madison and is the curator of "Radio Chipstone" - a project funded by the Chipstone Foundation, a decorative arts foundation whose mission is preserving and interpreting their collection, as well as stimulating research and education in the decorative arts.
