The history of sugar production has actively shaped Western visual culture in the past half-millennium. This exhibition investigates that relationship using our permanent collection. Starting with the colonial establishment of sugar plantations and the trans-Atlantic slave trade (J.M.W. Turner was a sugar plantation investor and major patrons owned tens of thousands of acres of sugar cane and thousands of slaves in Jamaica), the show will move into sugar as a luxury commodity (using silver and other luxury dessert tools from our decorative arts collection). It will also include the twentieth century with the transition of sugar to an extremely cheap product and staple of popular culture, with its subsequent high profile in street photography and pop art.Our complicated relationship with sugar goes back centuries. The closer one looks, the more clearly it appears as a pervasive cultural force. This new exhibition explores the far-reaching consequences of international sugar trade and sugar's journey from a luxury commodity to a pantry staple. Prints, drawings, photographs, sculpture, tableware and textiles from the IMA Collection will show guests to Sugar how this commodity has shaped our material culture and social conventions. Guests will see pieces created with sugar as well as renderings of classic treats and other artworks made possible by sugar in surprising ways. Sugar the exhibition will be accompanied by a culinary pop up where guests can sample products with historic sugar trade connections, but from modern companies that are fair-trade, employee owned and environmentally sustainable.