Square Meal
Date2001/2021
MediumBronze and found material
Dimensions4 × 14 × 8 3/4 in. (10.2 × 35.6 × 22.2 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineMuseum purchase with funds from the Boeckman Acquisition Fund, 2022
Object number2022.21.1
DescriptionCast metal hand and plaid metal lunch box.eMuseum Notes
As the daughter of an antique dealer, Mildred Howard was taught the narrative value of everyday objects from a very young age. Her artistic body of work reflects this respect for the commonplace, combining found objects into collages that tell vivid stories, confronting various social issues from racial discrimination to gender inequality. This piece combines a bronze casting of Howard's own hand and a found object in the form of a vintage lunchbox. The title, "Square Meal", is a play on words, referring to both the literal shape of the lunchbox and the phrase "square meal", which (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) denotes a meal that is "substantial, satisfying, and balanced." However, when we look at this piece, that is not the perception we have of the box's contents. Intuitively, we can sense that the hand is more "substantial" than the object it carries, solid bronze being significantly weightier than an empty tin box. This square meal lends us not a feeling of fulfillment, but of emptiness. This sense of unease reminds us of childhood poverty, the failure of school lunch programs, and the nutritional and educational inequity children of color and other disadvantaged students often face. The title becomes darkly ironic in this light, implying that the only way we would be justified in calling this a square meal would be when describing the shape of it, and not the contents.
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1997