Melville Graduate Gallery, SUNY Stony Brook
Stony Brook, New York • 8–22 April 2002
POTATOLAB was Jeffrey Allen Price’s MFA thesis exhibition and the first fully realized attempt to transform the potato into an interdisciplinary platform for art, education, research, performance, collecting, and community participation. Presented as a fictional potato research laboratory, the gallery was transformed with burlap-covered walls, a potato research library, historical timeline, concession stand, exhibition space, and performance stage.
Throughout the exhibition, Price assumed the role of the “Potato Laboratorian,” wearing a custom burlap laboratory coat and headband adorned with a living potato sprout while guiding visitors through the experiment and leading a series of public performances and educational programs.
Throughout the two-week exhibition, visitors were invited to explore potato-related books, artifacts, music, games, food, and performances while participating in a series of public programs including Potato Lesson I, Potato Game Night, Potato Lesson II, and Potato Comedy Night. The exhibition also featured the growing Potato Collection, educational lectures, audience participation activities, and a temporary potato gift shop selling original merchandise.
Conceived as both artwork and social experiment, POTATOLAB positioned the potato as a catalyst for learning, conversation, humor, and cultural exchange. Many of the ideas first explored during the project—including collecting, public programming, potato humanities, interdisciplinary research, community engagement, and the creation of temporary potato institutions—would later become foundational elements of the Think Potato Institute. POTATOLAB remains one of the most important milestones in the development of Jeffrey Allen Price’s ongoing potato practice.
Related Concepts:
→ POTATOISM
→ Potato Humanities
Related Exhibitions:
→ POTATOLAB (2002)
→ THINK POTATO INSTITUTE (Temporary Headquarters) (2010)