MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART

WARWICK CINEMA

"NOT A MELTING POT, BUT A SALAD BOWL." This, we are told, is multicultural America, where different ethnicities don't simply blend into a common fondue of American identity but retain their distinctive flavor to enrich a larger American salad. Ideally, the lettuce appreciates the tomatoes for the tomato-ness, the mushrooms for their mushroom-ness, and so on; yet we are often too busy to examine each component of the salad bowl for its complexities. We chew it quickly, sensing only what is most immediate to our tastebuds, nod, and move on to the next bite, Thus it is that American multiculturalism touts only the most obvious and easily accessible features of its various ethnic groups. Italian culture is tomato sauce and Sunday Mass and frescoes; Jewish culture is all about dreidels and yarmulkes and challah and concentration camps. This is what we know, the extent of what we see; and we, proud of our superficial knowledge of a culture other than our own, see little need to learn more. We have mastered the outward symbols of an ethnic group, but what lies underneath often escapes our childlike attention.