Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. My name is Kerry Diamond. I'm the founder of Cherry Bombe and I'd like to welcome all of you to the Julia Jubilee, our virtual celebration of the life and legacy of Julia Child. I know some of you are still joining, so I'm just going to talk for a minute while we let everybody join us on the Zoom. If you haven't already, let us know where you're tuning in from in the chat. You know where the chat is, right? Write down there and I've been watching this already and it's incredible. I mean we have people from all over the world tuning in. I think I saw Sweden, where else did I see? Scotland, Ireland, Canada, all over the US. It's really wonderful that all of you could join us for today's talk.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. So, let's do some housekeeping. We've got a wonderful talk for you. Catherine Baker, the newest member of Cherry Bombe is going to do the introduction in just a minute, but I want to remind all of you that we will take audience questions at the end. You've got the Q and A box right down there. If you have questions, put them in the Q & A box but feel free to chat with each other in the chat. We'll also be sharing some information in the chat throughout the interview. I would really love to thank our sponsors. Without them, we wouldn't have been able to offer all this wonderful free programming like today's talk. I'd like to thank Kerry Gold, Crate & Barrel, Le Creuset, Whole Foods, San Pellegrino, Kobrand Fine Wine and Spirits.
Kerry Diamond:
All right, I think that's it. I think almost everybody is here. The number is still ticking up a little bit. Again, thank you everyone. This is our 10th Jubilee which is really hard to believe. We have done eight in person Jubilees over the years and this is our second virtual Jubilee and it's so wonderful like I said to welcome folks from all over the world to join us. I would like to pass things over to Catherine Baker and she will walk us through what's to come next. Catherine, are you there? Hi Catherine.
Catherine Baker:
Hi, Kerry. Thank you so much.
Kerry Diamond:
You're welcome.
Catherine Baker:
Welcome everyone.
Kerry Diamond:
Bye everybody.
Catherine Baker:
Thank you everyone for joining us today for our special event. We appreciate that you've taken the time to spend the next hour with us. As Kerry said, I'm Catherine, the newest member of the Cherry Bombe team and it's my honor to introduce our guest today. Just yesterday, as Kerry said, we kicked off the Julia Jubilee which is all about the life and legacy of Julia Child. Our programming this week includes talks, panels and demos and we're excited to offer you this free events. As you know, our recent issue of Cherry Bombe was all about Julia. It seems everyone has a Julia story and like Julia, I too experienced living and cooking in France, and it completely changed my life and philosophy on food.
Catherine Baker:
From her love of butter and copper pots to her infectious way of living, Julia has been a daily inspiration for me, as I know she's been for you. If you've not gotten a copy of the issue yet or would like to view our full Jubilee schedule, you can do so at cherrybombe.com. I know that you've been looking forward to today's conversation. We're going to hear from some amazing guests as they discuss Julia and her famous kitchen. Priya Krishna is a reporter for The New York Times Food Section, and NYT Cooking. She's also the author of the best selling cookbook, Indian-ish and in 2020, she was named to Forbes 30 under 30 list. Priya has also spoken at mini Cherry Bombe jubilees and we're so thrilled to welcome her back.
Catherine Baker:
Paula J. Johnson is a curator and public historian in the division of work and industry at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. She directs the Smithsonian's Food History Project and was one of the curators who collected Julia Child's home kitchen in 2001. Paula led the team that created the current exhibition, Food, Transforming the American Table. Please join me in welcoming Priya and Paula. Hi, guys. Priya, I'll let you take it away.
Priya Krishna:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Catherine. Hi, Paula. It's so exciting to be here with you. In case you all don't know, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Paula and her team when I did an event at the Smithsonian for my book Indian-ish and it was absolutely wonderful, and I have gotten a chance to peruse Julia Child's kitchen, which is on display in the Smithsonian and we're here to sort of talk about how that came to be. What it means to display someone's kitchen and what we can take away from Julia's kitchen that feels applicable to us as home cooks now. So, Paula, I think the first thing that we're all really curious to hear about is like, how did the idea come about for taking Julia's kitchen into the Smithsonian? It's not every day that you transport an entire kitchen into a museum, and how did that conversation go?
Paula J. Johnson:
Sure, absolutely. Just I want to say how wonderful it is to be here, to see so many people and I want to thank Kerry and the whole Cherry Bombe team for the invitation and of course to Priya for engaging in this conversation this afternoon. Priya, we love, love, love having you at the museum a couple years ago and we all got your book, and we're working our way through it. So it's great to be here with you, but back, we have to go back about 20 years to talk about collecting the kitchen. At the time, in 2001, we were a few years into this Food History Project at the museum. By we, I mean my colleagues, Rayna Green, Nancy Edwards, John Fleckner and Steve Velasquez, the four of us were ... or five of us were working together on various research projects.
Paula J. Johnson:
At the time, a lot of people, academics and journalists and culinary professionals, we were thinking about the big changes that we were seeing in food. For us, we realized how our recent history was not well represented yet in the museum's collections. We were actually in the midst of researching the rise of American wine and wine-making and kept seeing all of these parallel strands to the history of food. So we had this general collecting plan for food that focused on stories, from the second half of the 20th century about these big changes, and they kind of fell into two thematic pots, if you will. The impact of new technologies and the forces that created the food system as we know it, and a range of social and cultural shifts that really influenced so many new ideas about cooking and food and health.
Paula J. Johnson:
So it wasn't a big leap for us when we heard that Julia Child was leaving her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts to return to her home state of California. Several of our colleagues in the food world at that time, the AIWF, the American Institute of Wine and Food in particular, really encouraged us to move quickly on what we were considering, which was to visit Julia and to speak with her about her plans. So we flew to Boston, we'd never been to the Irving Street home but we felt we'd been in her kitchen, like a lot of other people who watched her last three television programs, which were all taped in her Cambridge home. It's hard to describe what came over the three of us, Nancy, Rayna and I, as we crossed this very threshold, into this 18 by 20 foot room where Julia was standing there, she welcomed us in her warm and wonderfully gracious way.
Paula J. Johnson:
We felt a spark, that I would translate as something like this seemingly simple room is it, this is the bomb. This was a home kitchen, yes but it was also so much more a classroom, a lab, a curated collection of tools and technologies, used by this enormously popular and respected cook and teacher and television star. So suddenly, the notion of collecting just a symbolic balloon whisk or a copper bowl, or her stand mixer, or even the big garland range that you see here, just seemed so limiting and limited, sort of superficial and ordinary. The room itself with all of its parts and pieces was something incredibly special. So we sat around the table, the kitchen table with Julia, the table where she and her husband, Paul, and many, many, many family members and friends over the years, had enjoyed home-cooked meals.
Paula J. Johnson:
Meals by the way that they probably helped prepare because as we learned, being invited to Julia's for dinner usually meant you would be given an assignment, as for Julia, cooking, like eating is essentially a social act. So we asked her about her plans and about some of the objects that we could see and from there, when she spoke about her love of the kitchen, about how she and Paul had designed it together, and the backstories on some of her kitchen tools, we knew that those stories would really resonate with our public. So we talked about the Smithsonian, she was already a fan. For those of you who may know that she did a program called Primordial Soup with the National Air and Space Museum in 1973, which is just a treasure.
Paula J. Johnson:
We really had to explain ourselves, about our work to shine a brighter light on food history as an essential part of understanding American history. She understood implicitly what we were talking about.
Priya Krishna:
I would have ... just to jump in.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yeah, please.
Priya Krishna:
What do you think it was about Julia's kitchen that felt so essential, sort of, in your quest to sort of understand American food history?
Paula J. Johnson:
Well, it was the way it was arranged by her. All of the tools and the work zones that she had, the layers of time that you could see in the kitchen, there are these old technologies right next to new technologies, and knowing what we know about her biography, you can just see this person who is becoming Julia Child and becoming this person who was so influential to so many people, and to inspire so many people to stay in the kitchen and learn more about cooking and about food and things that they may not have tried before. The material culture itself was really dense. There was a lot in there. So everywhere you look, you could sort of see that there were these tools that were both very prosaic, but also incredibly special.
Paula J. Johnson:
That was Julia, I mean, she would use the tools that worked for her. So whether it's a good old American cast iron or a fancy French copper bowl, side by side there they hang on the pegboard in the kitchen.
Priya Krishna:
Were there any tools or items or even books you saw in the kitchen that surprised you and felt like, "Huh, this is not what I expected?"
Paula J. Johnson:
Well, the answer would be yes. It's about 1200 pieces in the kitchen and once we had talked to her about donating it and she thought about it and then agreed, she basically let us loose for several hours to do an inventory of everything. So we opened up every single drawer, made lists opened up every cabinet and keyed everything to its place. One cupboard door, we opened ... and we just couldn't figure out why there was a mirror hanging inside of the door, way up high. Of course, you can't tell but I'm five foot two, my colleague Rayna is five foot three, Julia Child is six foot three. So that was her little makeup mirror, because she welcomed people into that kitchen. They'd park their car, in the drive.
Paula J. Johnson:
They'd come up those back steps and boom, across that threshold and she made it to zhuzh a little bit. So in addition to that mirror, in her junk drawer, yes, she had a junk drawer but beneath that, there's a little lipstick and just a little ... things that she wanted, just to zhuzh, to welcome people into the kitchen. So that was one big surprise. For us the labeling of everything was just so remarkable. All of the masking tape, those plastic dymo labels on everything, Polaroid pictures hanging on the pegboard. At first, we were like, "What is going on here?" When she told us that so many people were cooking in this kitchen with her, and they needed to know where to put things back because it was a very complicated setup.
Paula J. Johnson:
So, for museum curators when things are labeled, we're always very happy to have them labeled, in Julia's own hand and in her own words, just our hearts went to flutter. I think we were also ... Priya, there are gadgets and then there are gadgets-
Priya Krishna:
Yeah.
Paula J. Johnson:
Gobsmacked by the gadgets, drawer after drawer and we were down there working as fast as we could. She was upstairs in her home office, she was busy doing something. So she would come down though every now and then and check on us and when we couldn't identify something, we put it over in a little pile on the table, key it to where we had to put it back because we just lived in fear of putting something back in the wrong place. She came down and we would ask her, "Okay, what's this?" For example, there was a device that we learned was for holding the lamb bone while you're carving the Manche à gigot and he had not one, but two, the marrow scoops. We hadn't fully understood about marrow scoops but there were plenty of them there. We got those sorted out.
Paula J. Johnson:
Fish scalers, my gosh, so many ways of getting those scales off fish, all together in these drawers. So those are some of the things there was one surprise that we found when we got everything to the museum, which of course took several months and 55 crates and boxes but beneath the kitchen table, there were these bananas stickers and I think there was a slide that showed them. Those were left by Paul Child, he loved bananas and he put a couple of those stickers underneath the table. When we found those, we remember Julia telling us, "You might find some banana stickers." So, yes, I mean, lots of wonderful surprises, no kidding.
Priya Krishna:
One thing that we were talking about was how, in this era of Zoom, there is this tendency, when you're talking to someone to sort of peek at like what's behind them and it's sort of this voyeuristic thing, and I really can't imagine sort of a more voyeuristic exercise or a way to sort of peek into someone's life or even understand the values of a time than looking into someone's kitchen, and I'm sort of curious how you think about sort of the idea of a kitchen as a gateway to understanding history, to understanding a person and the purpose that it serves.
Paula J. Johnson:
Priya, I love that question so much because as historians, we're always finding ways of how can we bring people's experiences to life for other people. Historic house museums know really how important it is, with kitchens, especially, whether it's Mount Vernon or the Tenement Museum, where they have kitchens from the Rogarshevsky and the Baldizzi families. I remember at the Maine State Museum, many, many, many years ago had this fantastic kitchen on display and it was riveting, and even for me something like at Mystic Seaport, you go into the belowdecks, in the fishing schooners, and you can see the galleys, and you are taken someplace else and you're understanding something in a really fundamental way about life, because that's where people eat. That's where food is prepared.
Paula J. Johnson:
Elsewhere in the museum, we have an 18th-century house from Massachusetts on display and there's a kitchen of course in the house, and that is interpreted from its World War Two period. So, that's a chance to tell the story of Victory Gardens and of canning produce, which is very important during that period. I don't have to tell you this, but kitchens are complicated spaces, and they go well beyond places where food is prepared and consumed. When Julia said to us that the kitchen was the beating heart of her home, she was revealing what many of us feel about our own kitchens or those that we remember from the past. What some scholars called the emotional geography, if you will, of the domestic space.
Paula J. Johnson:
If you look at history, as we tend to do, you'll see that kitchens really are laden with memories and meanings that provide perhaps new understandings of people's lives. For example, kitchens were terribly dangerous places for enslaved women who were vulnerable to attack, to abuse and to great harm, while carrying out their food work. For women, immigrants and migrants, like at the Tenement Museum, the kitchen was and still is an important place to express and sustain connections to homelands through the recipes that they may have brought with them, if not, in writing, certainly in memory. I mean, this is something, Priya that in your wonderful book, you've given us a great sense of your family's kitchen.
Paula J. Johnson:
The photographs are marvelous. We all want to just be there around with you guys, and your mother's devotion to cooking. It's something that many, many people share. I just want to say a couple of other things. In the post-war period, kitchens became important spaces of what we would call modernity. They demonstrated ideas about these labor-saving technologies and efficiencies of design and the embrace of science and technology in the industrialized production of processed and frozen foods. The Kitchen of Tomorrow exhibit at the 1964 World's Fair in New York was extremely popular. There's a really interesting YouTube video you can watch. It's full of labor-saving devices that allowed women to sort of swan about the house, all dressed up and at their leisure.
Paula J. Johnson:
Of course, this was very popular with people who are thinking maybe that is the future, but we all know that, despite modern technologies and efficiencies, real kitchens were still viewed by many as a site of drudgery and thankless repetitive work.
Priya Krishna:
Brutally.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yeah.
Priya Krishna:
I mean, I think about my own family and my mom describing her mother's relationship with the kitchen and her mother wanted to be a lawyer, and had all these aspirations, she hated cooking. So the kitchen to her was like a prison, she hate it, she hated being stuck in there, having to cook meals for the family, when she had all of these aspirations but my mom, sort of more like Julia, she wanted to make the kitchen like a true expression of her personality and who she was, and inject it with her personality, her flavors and just like, the kitchen has played that duality of roles throughout history, I just think is so interesting, like what other part of the house has done that?
Paula J. Johnson:
It's true, and there in your family, you have the contradictions that we try to present in the exhibition about transforming the American table because, of course, when Julia came on the scene in 1961, with Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and then with her television series in 1963, her message about staying in the kitchen about enjoying cooking, about learning new things and taking the time, that was really at odds with the popular culture, industrial food with many women's magazines, which was, we're all about, "Look, there are these labor saving things. There's this new food that you don't really have to do much with." You can do other things. So that tension that we show in the exhibition, the I Hate to Cook Book and Mastering the Art of French Cooking, both published in the same year, those contradiction-
Priya Krishna:
Fascinating, yeah.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Priya Krishna:
So one thing that I feel like, is a theme of the Julia issue of Cherry Bombe and has been a theme of Jubilee is just like the range of types of people who Julia meant something to, when my mom immigrated to this country in the 1980s, the very first show she ever watched was Julia Child's The French Chef. She didn't know how to cook. She had memories of Indian flavors that she had eaten and so she basically took Julia's techniques and applied it to her memories of Indian food and that is how she taught herself to cook, and I was talking to her on the phone the other day and she was sort of talking to me about how she fell in love with Julia Child as an immigrant because Julia just didn't make a big deal out of cooking. It wasn't an aspirational thing.
Priya Krishna:
It wasn't something that only a certain type of person could do. It was something that anyone could do. So, I wonder how that translates to the exhibit? Who are the kinds of people that come to this exhibit? Have there been any sort of interesting anecdotes or reactions that you've seen from people who come?
Paula J. Johnson:
First of all, I love that story. Thank you for sharing the story about your family, about your mother and I'm so glad this is being recorded, so that we will have that story for us too, as well. I have a million stories, we get about four million visitors a year at the museum when we're open. We have been closed for the last year, but many, many, many people go through the gallery and see the kitchen. You cannot get into the food exhibition without walking past the kitchen and it's like a magnet, you have to look in. At this point, it's become kind of a pilgrimage and many years ago, I was walking on Constitution Avenue and I heard one of the tour guides with a bullhorn, informing his tour group that this is the American History Museum. It's the home of the Star-Spangled Banner, Judy Garland's ruby slippers, Thomas Edison's light bulb and Julia Child's kitchen.
Paula J. Johnson:
Of course, I practically fell on the sidewalk, I was so touched that, "Oh, there we are." Priya, I wish that we had taken a video footage of our first opening of the kitchen. It was in a small exhibit Bon Appetit in 2002 and this was a year, after we collected the kitchen, it was in time for Julia's 90th birthday and she came and blessed it. This gallery we opened, it was August, it was hot as could be as Washington often is. We actually had a line of people waiting to get in, which doesn't happen that often. We had to pulse people through this little gallery. They're standing in line, were young couple wearing their chef whites, and they had a tiny, tiny infant with them. So of course, we went to talk to them and they said we had to come, we have to see this.
Paula J. Johnson:
We have to introduce our daughter to her heritage, because they felt that Julia had inspired them so much, and basically help them find their path, their career path. So things like that happen. For years, at the museum, we've been saying, if you're having a bad day, just go downstairs, hang out at Julia's kitchen for a while and just watch people, you'll feel better immediately. It's so true, the atmosphere around that kitchen is really uplifting. People seem really happy to be there. People interact with each other, total strangers that doesn't happen on most other exhibits.
Priya Krishna:
Totally.
Paula J. Johnson:
I did pull some quotes from my notebooks for you, and I'll never forget one where somebody was looking really intently at all of the tools and said, "Look at that Poulet au Pot. It's just like my mom's," and that then started a conversation. Don't you love that painting of the kids and love the cats and asparagus? I wonder if I could get a print. I get request for that print all the time. We don't know have it but people love that painting. I also heard somebody say to a stranger, "I never learned how to use the dough hook on my stand mixer. What about you?" They get a little tutorial there about how to do that. So, this is just to say that people love it. They feel comfortable, they talk about it. They tell us that learning to cook out of mastering which is difficult.
Paula J. Johnson:
I don't know if you've done much, I've slogged through many recipes, but people have told us that preparing recipes out of mastering together as a couple has brought them together. People remember sort of being plopped in front of the TV and watching The French Chef with their moms and it was incredibly important. I have two more quick things. One is that, chefs come and many people just want to see this kitchen we had the graduating class from DC Central Kitchen come to the museum a couple years ago which was incredibly important for us to be able to talk to them about their new career paths and they wanted to know more about Julia. Over the years, we've had probably a dozen I would say young women junior high and high school who have done their National History Day projects around Julia Child.
Paula J. Johnson:
They come to study the kitchen as part of their research. This is so impressive. They are so ... they want to get it right and they have this ... just this fundamental, just love for Julia Child. We have staff members, who have come and told me that she's meant a great deal to them over the years. They share recipes with us. So Julia would be really happy with all of this. I have one more quick story that I've never told. So I threw it in here because I love it so much and it talks about Julia and this kitchen and what it can do. A visitor who has now become a friend of mine told me that in 1981, '82, she and her then-boyfriend, now husband, actually lived in the Irving Street house for 10 months while Julia and Paul were in Provence. She described this house-sitting job, and they had to interview for it.
Paula J. Johnson:
They were invited to lunch, which of course, she said, "What's that going to be?" All sorts of speculation. It turned out Julia was making hamburgers, which she loved. She was mixing the meat with salt and pepper and a little red wine. She made one single perfect burger in a saute pan and then cut it in wedges to serve with a little serving of Fritos on the side.
Priya Krishna:
That sounds delicious.
Paula J. Johnson:
I know, but my friend said that spending that 10 months in Julia's house and in that kitchen, that's how she learned how to cook just by cooking in Julia's kitchen, because that's where she learned this whole notion of a space for working dough and pastry, and for chopping vegetables and for things that you need at hand like this photograph that's up right now. You need to grab when you're at the garland range. This was something that she had not been taught and it was revolutionary. Also, Julia's library, she has so many cookbooks that are not on the kitchen shelf. The kitchen shelf is pretty small, but my friend was able to like look through Greek food and all of these different cookbooks that Julia had.
Paula J. Johnson:
That 10 months was like, transformational for her, in her ... made a huge impact on her life. So anyway, I just wanted to tell that story.
Priya Krishna:
That's a great story. Thank you for sharing it. I think the other thing about Julia's kitchen that really struck me was that it was not a hyper neat, hyper minimalist ... I would say it's a maximalist kitchen, if anything and I think these days when you look at Instagram, when you open a lot of glossy food magazines, we're sort of used to seeing these like very, almost sterile, all white kitchens, very stripped down, very sleek and I feel like just like the way that we're taught to cook oftentimes is very aspirational, very Instagrammy. I think one of the joys for me of walking around, Julia's kitchen was I was like, this is my kitchen. There are things that are mismatched. There is like that one stain on that one pan that you can't get off and you've given up on it.
Priya Krishna:
You're just like, it's fine, it's just this pan with the stain. I just think that there's something so wonderful about sort of the slight mess that is Julia's kitchen that sort of almost as a cook, it gives you ... you can breathe and I think watching her show and seeing that not everything behind her was so perfectly arranged was a huge part of the appeal to me because I feel like for me as a cook, I am always trying to emphasize like, you're never going to be ... you don't have to worry about perfectly chopped onions. If your range has like a little turmeric stain, that's okay, that's part of the character and I just ... I guess this isn't even a question but I'm just like ... I just think that the sheer accessibility of that kitchen and the fact that you chose not to clean it up, or make it look super fancy, was that like a discussion that you all had as you were putting the exhibit together?
Paula J. Johnson:
Well, actually no, because we put it back together exactly how it was. I will say that we did run everything through the dishwasher before packing it up, a little bit to Cambridge. So we had a whole crew they were the dishpan hands crew and they sort of just ran everything either through the dishwasher or cleaned it up because of course everybody who is a cook has a residue of things on the pots and pans and so bringing things into the museum we had to be a little careful about that. Gosh, Julia, she would just love to hear ... you talk about your turmeric stains and whatnot, for a lot of our visitors, they're just exactly like you because they say, "Oh my gosh, it looks kind of like my kitchen. It's cluttered. It's kind of refreshing and empowering for people to see that Julia, just like them, they just have stuff everywhere."
Paula J. Johnson:
Their kitchens aren't open concept. They don't have huge islands and immaculately organized pantries and expensive gas ranges and pot fillers and pendant lighting and tiles and black splashes and all of that stuff. In a sense, so they're saying if it's good enough for Julia, it's good enough for me too.
Priya Krishna:
Exactly.
Paula J. Johnson:
That, the cluttered countertops as well as the Eden table. I mean, that table got a lot of ware. She preferred to have guests, up to as many as she could fit around that table, as opposed to going into the more formal dining room. I was reading an article just a couple days ago about decluttering because of course, we're all supposed to be decluttering our lives so that we can have more peace and calm and this phrase was in there, "The kitchen is a hotspot for duplicates and so you should get rid of duplicates." Well, it just course, made me laugh thinking about all the fish scalers and everything in Julia's gadget drawers. I mean, decluttering would not have been at all and what I wanted to do.
Priya Krishna:
I feel validated because I have six sets of measuring cups, and each one is important.
Paula J. Johnson:
Absolutely. The kitchen is exactly as it was when she left in 2001. Except for the floor. I think I've told this story before, but we tried to take the linoleum but there was asbestos in the adhesive. So we basically took a sample and created a pattern and then, we now have paper on the floor, wallpaper. It is her pattern. The other thing is that when we brought everything to the museum, we made ourselves into an exhibition. We found a gallery that had a block of windows and we just started unpacking in front of the public. People would stop and just watch and speculate and we learned from them that they wanted to see everything exactly the way it was in Julia's time. That gave us just a lot of I think, justification for creating the room and not just taking a few things.
Paula J. Johnson:
The colors, the layout, she could have updated any number of times but she told us that that color scheme, they chose in 1961 and she never wanted to change it. She and Paul have had many pocket-sized spaces for kitchens when they were living abroad for his work. So they knew exactly what they wanted when they settled in Cambridge and that's what you see. It's very much you look at some old photographs from the 1960s and there's not quite that much clutter, but she's well on her way to what we see in 2001 when she left. Of course, she didn't feel the need to keep up with anyone or to buy into trendy, it has it all.
Priya Krishna:
Great. I love that.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah.
Priya Krishna:
I wanted to switch gears a little bit, because as much as I love Julia Child, and I think about what an impact she had on me and so many people, I think about all of the amazing chefs and cooks who have had an indelible impact on American food, who don't have exhibits, who don't get their kitchens displayed in the Smithsonian, and particularly the nonwhite chefs and cooks who shaped American food. I'm really curious, if in your dream world, you could set up another kitchen exhibition in the Smithsonian, is there someone whose kitchen you would love to poke around?
Paula J. Johnson:
I appreciate this question, this hypothetical question and if any of my museum colleagues are to tuned in, remember, she said it was like my dream world. We have a very severe space shortage at the moment, so it would be extremely difficult to bring in any full room at this point. So remember, this is a dream but first, I want to do a shout-out. I want to do a shout-out to MOFAD, the Museum of Food and Drink in New York. They have on display ... unfortunately, they're also closed, but the test kitchen for Ebony Magazine in the 1970s and this is just an amazing object, amazing artifact and it has a history that is not as well known as it should be. So I would love to see this and hope that MOFAD can continue to preserve it in some way and that they too will be opening again fairly soon. Of course, when I answer a question, I always go way around it to get to it.
Paula J. Johnson:
Priya, there are some really compelling settings in our museum, and they're not full rooms, but the settings are created with key artifacts that have a lot of power in American history. I've been thinking about this. I'd love to be able to expand one of those settings with more objects and layers of the history. The Greensboro lunch counter from the Civil Rights Movement is one incredibly important object that speaks to history and food justice. I think it would be amazing to pair that with a story of someone like Georgia Gilmore, an African American woman who worked as a cook in Montgomery, Alabama, and who, during the bus boycotts, used her culinary skills to feed and ... both feed and fund the resistance.
Paula J. Johnson:
She organized women to prepare meals and bake goods, selling them out of their houses, and also at protests and meetings. She lost her job because of her activism and ended up starting a catering business and home restaurant. So in my mind, I'm thinking, we have the lunch counter, telling the story of the civil rights movement through these food spaces, the lunch counter and Georgia Gilmore's kitchen or home restaurant, whatever that looked like, I think would be a unique and really memorable way to tell that history.
Priya Krishna:
I would love to go to that exhibit.
Paula J. Johnson:
Okay. I have also been thinking a little bit more about food spaces, and maybe not only domestic spaces. So, a historic Chinese restaurant kitchen from San Francisco to explore the long history of Chinese food in the United States, and then, what about modern food trucks? Yeah, let's bring a truck into the museum, to shine a light on these really important strands of history, that we're kind of living through, the economic conditions, that have been a barrier to entrepreneurs, trying to secure a capital for brick and mortar restaurants or showing a truck as a viable enterprise for immigrants and migrants, young people just starting out, as well as this is a space for ... narrow space to be sure but for communicating about their culinary traditions and innovative ideas around food, that are just percolating there.
Paula J. Johnson:
Would this be LA, New York, DC, Detroit, Houston, who knows but lots of incredible stories could be told and then, my final and related thing would be, to really think about pop-up kitchen. So many were organized to help feed people during the pandemic or of course, during natural disasters like our friend Jose Andres with World Central Kitchen. That kind of space could address issues of labor, philanthropy, politics, justice, culture community. So that would be another idea. So, I guess I'm throwing these out but I also just want to say that if were we to do something like this, I think we would get a lot of input from people. We would go out to various communities around the country to really talk about what are the essences of food spaces, and what are the stories that people think we need to tell.
Paula J. Johnson:
This is a way for us to really live the work that we do at the American History Museum where we are aiming to be the most inclusive and diverse and accessible and relevant museum, history museum in the country. So I think food is always the way to get at all of those things and I just love that idea.
Priya Krishna:
I literally have the chills. I want all of these exhibits. Sign me up for all the focus groups.
Paula J. Johnson:
Absolutely and Priya, you know that we have a great team with Teresa McCulla, Ashley Rose Young. Young scholars who are really breaking new ground in the kind of research they're doing and in the public history programming they're doing. It's an exciting place to be and to have this kind of energy around food history, is really exciting and we love to hear from people and we love to share ideas. So we'll be sure to invite you and people who are tuned in.
Priya Krishna:
Okay, so we've got some questions from the audience. Most of these are pretty quick. So I'm going to try to go through them rapid fire style so that we can get through as many as possible, because these are really fun questions.
Paula J. Johnson:
Okay.
Priya Krishna:
Were there things that Julia wanted to keep from her Cambridge kitchen for her California home?
Paula J. Johnson:
That's a great question, because we were worried that we would be depriving her of what she needed, but she assured us that no, she and Paul had set up their kitchen there. She had been there many, many times, so she pretty much left everything as it was. There were a few things and I don't know exactly what they were, that she did give to family members of course, but she had plenty of gear in her Santa Barbara home as well.
Priya Krishna:
I love this question. Is there significance to the time that the clock in the kitchen is set to which I believe is 12:20?
Paula J. Johnson:
Yes, of course. There's nothing accidental about what we do. That is the time that was on the photograph taken by our Smithsonian photographer, when we were just wrapping up before we started putting things into crates. That was the time on the clock and we think of that as that's when Julia's kitchen becomes a people's kitchen.
Priya Krishna:
I love that. When you first visited Julia to ask her about, taking maybe some things from her kitchen, did she cook for you and if so, what did she make?
Paula J. Johnson:
Well, she did not. We had sort of agreed ahead of time that was like ... she's busy. We can't take too much of her time. So when we got there, there was really no expectation. She had a lunch date already. So that is absolutely fine with us. I will say that when we did interview her, in September of that year, we were doing a video of her explaining different tools and things. There was a pot of veal stew, some sort of delicious smelling dish that was just kind of simmering on the back burner of the big garland. We did actually enjoy that meal with Julia. We all went in to the formal dining room, but you have to remember that that day was incredibly different from the norm. It was September 11th. So, nobody was going anywhere in Cambridge, so we stayed the entire day with Julia and enjoyed that fantastic veal stew and bread, crunchy bread and a salad.
Paula J. Johnson:
I remember she said that it was something that had been made by some chefs, I think from Le Damas Cafe that had been there the previous night and they have had this marvelous dinner and so we were eating leftovers with Julia.
Priya Krishna:
Amazing. So this is a great question as you were putting together the exhibit, were there any things or like sort of ways of structuring the kitchen that you saw in Julia's kitchen and then adopted in your own kitchen like for me, I'm like this makeup mirror idea is brilliant. I wanted to do that in my kitchen. Was there anything like that for you?
Paula J. Johnson:
I'm trying to think, it's been 20 years, but I know that I have a kitchen bookshelf as well as an office bookshelf behind me but Julia's bookshelf had all sorts of other things on there that she needed because again, the kitchen was her ... the room, she spent a lot of time in it. So she had volumes like Bird Guides, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, How to Clean Absolutely Everything, what to do if something happens to this electrical appliance. I think if I ... I'm not going to, but if I showed you my kitchen bookshelf, it would look a little bit like Julia's.
Priya Krishna:
I love this question. You know how in Julie and Julia, Julia leaves an offering of butter at the exhibit? Do you ever have people leave offerings, butter or otherwise at the exhibit?
Paula J. Johnson:
Okay, the thing about Zoom is that you just don't know who's out there or anything like that, but I just expected, all of you will promise that you won't do this, because yes, a few people have left butter and it's not a great thing to do for the conservation of our artifacts. There have been just some remarkable weird things. We were having a group of people from Land O' Lakes in for an event and an hour before they got there, I went in just to check the gallery. Nobody from Land O' Lakes had been there. Went in, somebody had left on Land O' Lakes carton of butter and had signed it in the exhibit. I was like, I mean ... but yes, this has happened occasionally. I cleaned it up, but please, please, please don't do it.
Priya Krishna:
That seems like an amazing way to end this conversation. Do not leave butter at Julia Child's exhibit. Please, please, please. Leave it at home. Cook with it. Bake with it. Don't leave it at the exhibit. They don't want it.
Paula J. Johnson:
Right and enjoy it. Enjoy the butter yourself. Don't leave it for me to have to toss
Priya Krishna:
We would want you to enjoy the butter and not leave it at the exhibit. Well, Paula, this was such like an absolute joy. I really can't wait until the exhibit can reopen, and I can go back and visit it with renewed appreciation. Thank you so, so much for this conversation.
Paula J. Johnson:
Well, it was my pleasure. Thank you, Priya and thank you Cherry Bombe. As you can see, I enjoy talking about Julia. This is a highlight of my Smithsonian career and I really appreciate everybody tuning in. Here we are on week 58 of Zoom life and you're here on Friday afternoon. I so appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. Kerry Diamond from Cherry Bombe again, Priya and Paula, thank you so much. I mean, I don't know if you've had a chance to look at the chat, but that was the most wonderful conversation and everyone was so engaged, and I think I know you two have busy lives, but I think everyone could have listened to you for another hour. There are so many questions, so many good questions. Paula, we might have to reach out and have you answer those questions for us, and maybe we can post them on our website or something-
Paula J. Johnson:
Absolutely.
Kerry Diamond:
I did want to mention, we got some visual aids. We do have our Julia Child issue and there's a wonderful story that Janet Ozzard did with Paula about her memories from Julia's kitchen and packing it up and unpacking it, and I think some of you might have picked up on this, but it's the 20th anniversary of the acquisition, which is so amazing and we're so lucky to have this and how wonderful that the news broke today, that the National Museum of American History is reopening. We're so thrilled about that Paula and someone mentioned in the chat that they would have loved if we could have done this at the museum and done a 360. That was the original intention when we spoke to Paula many, many, many weeks or months ago about this chat. So hopefully one day we'll be able to do a Cherry Bombe event at the museum. I would love nothing more than that.
Paula J. Johnson:
I hope so too. I hope so too and everyone, please come visit the museum and the kitchen.
Priya Krishna:
Just so everyone knows what's the opening date?
Paula J. Johnson:
May 21st, we're reopening to the public on a particular schedule. So do take a look at what that will be this year ... Go ahead.
Kerry Diamond:
Just so people know practically, is it helpful if you're a member of the museum? Is that a way to kind of jump the line? How's the best way to get into the museum because I imagine there are a lot of museum lovers anxious to get back in there.
Paula J. Johnson:
We are democratic, everybody counts. Everybody comes, please. I think that people may feel a little anxious about traveling from a distance. I don't know what it will be like when we reopen, but we want everybody to be able to come but within of course the precautions that we have to take to protect the visitors and the staff.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Well, thank you so much, Paula. The Kitchen is a National Treasure but you're a national treasure as well.
Paula J. Johnson:
Thank you. I so appreciate that.
Priya Krishna:
Paul, I imagine there are people who are just crazy jealous that you even got to be in the same room as Julia. I know I am.
Paula J. Johnson:
Again, I have to tell you, we have what we call Smithsonian moments, and these are these moments when you have to pinch your staff, the person who's next to you and say, "We are so lucky and this is such a privilege and an honor to work at the Smithsonian," and right now, I feel it. That was certainly the case with collecting the kitchen. Welcoming Julia to the museum for her 90th birthday, and she came in and we don't let anybody walk in that kitchen with shoes on but of course, Julia could do anything she wanted. She walked in and she just looked around, and she felt that it was just exactly the way she had left it. There was one little knife that was a little crooked on the magnet and I fixed that and it was perfect. That again, was one of those moments where you just say, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Amazing.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
I hope we continue the conversation at the Smithsonian and Paula, thank you again for all your time that you've given to us, and Priya Krishna, I can't even remember how many jubilees you've spoken at now, but year after year, Priya has come and spoken at Cherry Bombe and you are a Cherry Bombe treasure, Priya and I just wanted to remind people, if you don't own Priya's book, it's fabulous and it should be on your bookshelf right next to Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So thank you both. Thank you to everyone who tuned in. We had so many people, again, from all over the world, so wonderful. We have more Julia Child programming all week. Free programming as part of our Julia Jubilee. We have a fun trivia night tonight. Paula, you're not allowed to ... no cheating if you join us for the trivia night.
Paula J. Johnson:
Okay.
Kerry Diamond:
We would love to see all of you tonight. That's at 8:00, and then we've got demos this weekend and more wonderful talks all next week. You can find the schedule at cherrybombe.com. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, again for making all of this programming free. We've got Whole Foods, Crate and Barrel, Le Creuset, Kerry Gold, Kobrand and San Pellegrino and I'm sure Kerry Gold was disappointed Paula to hear you say don't bring butter to the exhibit, but that is one of the takeaways folks, don't bring butter. Leave it at your kitchen, I know that's what Julia would have liked you to do.
Paula J. Johnson:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Have a wonderful afternoon, everyone. Wonderful Friday and weekend. Thank you, everyone.
Paula J. Johnson:
Bye. Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Bye.