No doubt you will hear this from others but it's so unusual to hear from anyone
from an art museum on this list that I can't resist answering too. At the De-
troit Institute of Arts we generally do not allow eating or drinking in exhibit
ion spaces around works of art. I say generally, because we, of course, make
exceptions. In our own museum we make an exception (no smoking, period -- more
or less!) for at least one special event a year which is a huge fund-raiser for
 the museum. When the galleries are used, the works of art are protected from
the wretched excesses of the spilling and tossing variety. When we lend works
of art individually, to other people's exhibitions, we almost uniformly say
no drinking, smoking, eating in storage or the exhibition. Again, there are
exceptions (to every rule, of course) such as when we lend framed and glazed
2-d works to small museums in Michigan in the context of a traveling exhibit
we sometimes allow receptions to be held in the gallery inhabited by the
exhibit because small museums tend not to have other social spaces they can
use and, after all, the works are protected. Same goes for all cased-in
shows. As with everything, common-sense application of rules is the humane
way to go. At least I think so.