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.