'Entangled Cultures' at the Maxwell Museum takes a global view of fermentation

A new exhibition opening at the University of New Mexico’s Maxwell Museum of Anthropology on Saturday, March 8, explores the central role fermentation has played across human civilizations.

“Entangled Cultures: How Humans and Microbes Co-create through Fermentation” is the first exhibition Toni Gentilli has curated since joining the museum as curator of exhibits.

From beer and wine to bread, cheese, yogurt, kimchi and kombucha, the range of foods made with microbial cultures is vast, and Gentilli takes a broad view of the subject. “Entangled Cultures” includes approximately 20 culinary and ceremonial objects from five continents, plus photographs, including electron microscope images of microbes.

“One really interesting item is a siphon used in the production of pulque, a traditional fermented beverage made from agave nectar, which has been made by peoples living in Mexico for 2,000 years,” she said. “The use of that item actually makes the farmer look as if they’re a hummingbird extracting nectar from a flower, so it’s a beautiful engagement with the plants of that particular landscape.”

The pulque siphon is just one of many objects in “Entangled Cultures” that shows the intertwined histories of humans and their local ecosystems.

“There’s this really beautiful woven grass beer strainer from South Africa, which is a traditional item that Zulu women weave together out of a local grass,” she said. “The beer is often used as an offering to the ancestors, so they’re recognizing the web of relationships between ancestors and the several hundred-year history they have with this particular grain.”

Throughout the exhibition, Gentilli plays up the dual anthropological and biological senses of “culture” while showing how humans and microbes have coevolved over time.

“Fermentation played a huge role in our biological development as a species,” she said. “And there are researchers who are putting forth hypotheses that fermentation probably played a larger role, not only in our biological development, but also our cultural development, than (learning to control) fire.”

One of the rarest objects in the show is an ancient Roman ceramic vessel called an amphora.

“It was used to transport different fermented items like olive oil, wine and garum,” she said. “Garum is an ancient type of fermented fish sauce that the Romans were particularly famous for.”

The opening reception for “Entangled Cultures” will take place on Saturday, March 8, from 2-4 p.m., and it will feature a variety of fermented foods and nonalcoholic beverages by local providers for sample and purchase.

There will also be a microbial-inspired performance by Abiquiú-based electronic musician Dain Daller, aka P.M. Dain.

“I plan on taking inspiration from the bubbling and bacterial growth and change of fermentation as the way that my sequenced sounds will progress and change,” Daller said. “I want to play around with patching different synths together so the oscillators and tones of one can interact and modify the sounds from another one, like ingredients and cultures interacting and modifying each other in ferments.”

The exhibition will run for a year, through March 14, 2026, and Gentilli has some exciting ideas for interactive programming she wants to roll out in the coming months, including a summer bread making workshop using the Maxwell’s authentic adobe horno oven.

“We have a horno in the courtyard at the museum, and I’m working on a multicultural workshop with someone of Middle Eastern descent, Hispanic descent and Pueblo descent,” she said.

“We’re probably also going to do a program around the local production of traditional Asian fermented foods, including somebody who is making soy sauce with New Mexico pinto beans and another person who’s making gochujang with New Mexican chiles,” she said.

Gentilli hopes the exhibition and related events will appeal to New Mexicans of all backgrounds and give them a new, more global perspective on foods and beverages they may take for granted.

“I’m really happy to bring more people into this wonderful, beautiful world of interconnection between the human and the biological,” she said. “It’s a perspective that is deeply related to a lot of the Indigenous communities that we work with locally and globally.”

'Entangled Cultures' at the Maxwell Museum takes a global view of fermentation