Never formally trained as a baker, but the former co-owner of the San Francisco bakery, Miette Patisserie, and the innovator of the acclaimed modern art desserts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Caitlin Freeman created a niche for herself in the baking world with her oeuvre of edible artworks.

As a photography student at UC Santa Cruz in the 90s, Freeman, along with her classmates, made frequent class trips to SFMOMA. Pulled from the photography exhibits they were supposed to be visiting, she found herself repeatedly drawn to a painting of cakes by Wayne Thiebaud (Display Cakes, 1963), whose chicly minimalist, richly frosted appearance drew her into a world that she never wanted to let go of.

She immersed herself in the realm of pastries, taught herself how to bake, worked at the counter of a bakery while still in school, and co-owned the Miette Patisserie for seven years. After leaving Miette, she built the pastry menu for her husband’s Blue Bottle Coffee shop, and when SFMOMA offered Blue Bottle the contract to run a cafe inside their museum, Freeman and her husband jumped at the chance. It was only while touring the site and realizing she was back in the same place where Thiebaud’s Display Cakes first caught her eye, did it occur to Freeman, this was her chance to bring that painting to life.

The Blue Bottle Coffee Bar opened in the SFMOMA 5th floor sculpture garden in 2009, and Freeman embarked on her now much imitated concept of creating playful, innovative desserts inspired by modern art. Together with her two assistants, Tess Wilson and pastry chef Leah Rosenberg, who both followed her from Miette Patisserie, Freeman built an edible body of work that pays homage to modern art and artists.

Only a few desserts at the cafe were permanent menu items, more often, each one debuted as an artist’s exhibition went up, and was discontinued when that show came down. The desserts were live responses to what was featured at the moment, like a menu serving only what’s in season, and the concept and results were such a beloved success, that museum curators and installation crews, who were regulars at the cafe, shared with Freeman and her team intel on upcoming exhibitions, like which artworks would be highlights of shows, and the timelines of when they would be going up and be coming down. Museum staff also collaborated on special events and suggested ideas for new creations, none of which is a given in the museum world. When Freeman did a pop-up at New York’s MOMA museum, curators there were completely unaccustomed to sharing information and ideas between the different departments. In exchange for these insights, Freeman kept the SFMOMA staff fed with cake and cookie bites, and served coffee at their frequent cafe meetings. Being included in the early planning stages of upcoming exhibitions allowed her and her team to be their most creative, while staying cohesively in sync with the museum’s offerings.

While initially not seeking permission from artists or their estates to reinterpret artworks and sell them as edible art tributes, most who learned of it were amused and pleased. One exception was the firm cease and desist order that came from artist Richard Serra for Freeman’s plate of cookies inspired by his Right Angle Plus One sculpture, from 1969. Following this, they attempted to receive prior approval for their projects, or if not possible, spoke with museum curators to better understand an artist’s concern for their show.

In order to come up with new ideas, the team would peruse the exhibitions. Often it was the iconic pieces that were made into desserts, but lesser known artworks were featured as well. When art didn’t explicitly reference a food directly, designs could become more conceptual. Maybe a shape or color reminded them of an ingredient, or a color inspired a flavor, or words captured in a photograph jump-started the idea for a recipe. It was an artistic process, and their tiny on-site kitchen worked as their art studio: the place where they could play with their wildest ideas, create, try, fail, and succeed. Rather than being replicas of anything, Freeman’s desserts were experiential interpretations of them, and museum goers, given the opportunity to engage deeper with the art, frequently went back into the gallery for a second look after eating her desserts.

Freeman and her team created at least 100 original modern art desserts during their time at SFMOMA, and in 2013, just as the museum was closing for several years of renovation work, she published her cookbook, Modern Art Desserts: Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Confections, and Frozen Treats Based on Iconic Works of Art, which featured many of them.

Drawn to art, and desiring to be an artist, Freeman finally became one, through baking: “I figured I would be inspired to make art once I knew how to make cakes—and then, almost by accident, making cakes became my art.”- Caitlin Freeman (-artnews.com).

To explore some of Freeman’s edible works of art read Part II of this blog.

Photos courtesy of Modern Art Desserts, modernartdesserts.com, Clay McLachlan, Ten Speed Press, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, sfmoma.org, openspace.sfmoma.org, store.moma.org, designfetish.org, theselby.com, Wayne Thiebaud, VAGA New York, npr.org, tate.org, berkeleyside.org, bbc.co.uk, Mondrian / Holtzman Trust, anothermag.com, herringbonebindery.com, George and Betty Woodman, sothebys.com, epicurious.com, sfmoma.tumblr.com, sfmoma Facebook, Willa Koerner, archilovers.com, ruthlaskey.com, Ian Reeves, Barnett Newman Foundation, Artists Right Society (ARS) New York, Charles Villyard, trendland.com, dsarttakes, saatchigallery.com,, dwell.com, Todd Selby, mathewmarks.com, npr.org, trmw.org, Marin Independent Journal, marinij.com, Wally Gobetz flickr, the-veghog.blogspot.com, news.artnet.com, The Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, artsy.net, art-nerd.com, lsnglobal.com, Rocor, Lanlian Szeto, The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at SFMOMA, Tony Cragg, maltm.com, Willa Koerner, kqed.org.