Art and food nourish our bodies and souls, and have the power to transform the way we think about the world around us. For decades, artists have used their work to inform and inspire movements for food justice and equity—using their mediums to provoke conversation and the exchange of ideas, decrease stigma, and foster a deeper understanding of our relationship to food and the world around us.

In this session, we’ll examine the role of the arts in the fight for food justice, and shine a light on the people who are building healthier, more equitable communities through art.

Meet Our Panelists

Von Diaz is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian, food historian, and author of Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking. She is a senior Producer at StoryCorps.

Hiram Larew is Founder, Poetry X Hunger: Bringing a World of Poetry to the Anti-Hunger Cause  and  Retired (2015) Director of International Programs, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture.

Stephen Towns is a fiber artist and figurative painter  and the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize, and in 2021, Towns was the first Black artist-in-residence at the Fallingwater Institute, located at Frank Lloyd Wrights’ renowned Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania.

Corby Kummer (moderator)  is executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science, and a senior editor of The Atlantic.