The Think Potato Institute defines Potato Humanities as the interdisciplinary study of the potato’s cultural, artistic, symbolic, historical, scientific, and social life. While references to the potato appear throughout history and across many fields of inquiry, the term has been further developed and articulated through the work of Jeffrey Allen Price, founder of the Think Potato Institute and originator of POTATOISM.
Within Potato Humanities, concepts such as the Potato Art Spectrum help illustrate the potato’s remarkable ability to occupy multiple cultural meanings simultaneously—from nourishment, agriculture, labor, and survival to humor, popular culture, symbolism, and artistic expression. This unusual symbolic flexibility makes the potato a uniquely productive subject for interdisciplinary study.
Through research, exhibitions, lectures, publications, collections, and public programming, the Institute seeks to expand and support the growing field of Potato Humanities.