Member Lecture—Death by Chocolate: Dieter Roth’s Chocolate Gnome

Member Lectures are available exclusively to Museum Members. Join today!

What do you get when you mix a garden gnome with real Swiss chocolate? One of the strangest—and most delightful—works in the Museum’s collection.

Join Melissa Venator, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of Modern Art, for a lively look at Chocolate Gnome, a bizarre and brilliant sculpture by German-Swiss artist Dieter Roth. Equal parts funny, grotesque, and sharply satirical, this chocolate-drenched gnome takes aim at two of Switzerland’s national treasures: its beloved garden gnomes and world-famous chocolate.

Along the way, Venator will introduce Roth’s irreverent, boundary-pushing approach to art making—and explain why this sticky, melty oddity has become her favorite piece in the collection.