August 2002: Julia Child's Kitchen Becomes Historical. And stray thoughts on the period room (not necessarily in that order)

Traditional "period rooms," once a staple feature of the museum of history or fine arts, fell into disrepute in recent years for a variety of reasons. As one curator puts it, they often incoherently (re)presented "decorative arts displays" or "local history" or "confusing combinations of both approaches." Still, there is certainly a value to preserving the individually significant interior as well as the exemplary collection for the study of material culture in general.

In its original incarnation as the spanking new but architecturally retrograde Museum of History and Technology (1964), the National Museum of American History (as it is now known) still featured old-fashioned period rooms (e.g. for showing off the dresses of First Ladies), considered at the time "a certain crowd-puller."


"history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress"

Still, this is not to say that everything was choked in conceptual cobwebs. My favorite example: in 1963, activists saved an 18th-century Ipswich, Massachusetts, house from demolition literally at the last moment by arranging to have the Smithsonian acquire it. So, instead of yet another Colonial period room, we have an entire home (the largest--some say: greatest--artifact in the collection) which tells the story of both structure and inhabitants from its origins to its abandonment. As the Smithsonian puts it, "The five families whose stories are told here were not famous, but they remind us that history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." In the most recent interpretation (2002), portions of the walls have been opened up to reveal the timber-frame structure, thus doing justice to the original focus on the evolution of technology.

The Museum continues to think innovatively in its acquisition and interpretation practices regarding historic interiors and objects. To be sure, you can still find such things as a 17th-century chair-table (nothing wrong with that!)--but also Archie and Edith Bunker's chairs, from the TV series, "All in the Familly"--which a curator boldly calls "the equivalent of the "Appomattox chairs" used by Grant and Lee when the Confederacy surrendered.

Equally interesting are the larger interior ensembles. For me, one of the most memorable and moving is the famed Greensboro desegregation lunch counter. As of 2008, it is also part of a new series of "landmark objects" anchoring and highlighting the themes of a given wing.


One kitchen that made history

As the Smithsonian says of the Ipswich House, "history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." And so, it seemed but fitting that at least a portion of another Massachusetts house should enter those galleries. It didn't make the cut as a "landmark object," it didn't date back to the 18th century, and it didn't play a role in the triumph of human rights, but it did change America in its own way, from foodways to women's history, and it has proven extremely popular. I am speaking of Julia Child's kitchen.

It opened at the Smithsonian on August 19, 2002, only shortly after the updated installation of the Choate House from Ipswich. When Julia Child (1912-2004) decided to relocate from Cambridge, Massachusetts to her native California at the end of her public career, she gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian.

"A Place for Everything"

"While kitchens of the 1950s and 1960s were often designed to keep everything hidden from view, Julia and Paul preferred to hang their pots and pans on a pegboard for quick and easy access. Nor would there be any confusion about where that pan belonged after it had been used, thanks to the outlines Paul traced on the pegboard. Later, for the benefit of student and guest cooks working in the kitchen with Julia, snapshots were added." (Smithsonian)

"Work zones"

"Julia organized her kitchen around work zones, making sure tools and equipment were placed near the surfaces where they would be used. Her pots, pans, and utensils are near the stove, her knives are near the sink, and her small appliances are set on solid work surfaces, ready to use." (Smithsonian)

As Mass Moments puts it:

Designed by her husband Paul in 1961, the room was specially tailored to his wife's particular needs, with high countertops to accommodate her six-foot two-inch frame. In her ten cookbooks and eight television programs, several of which were filmed in her own kitchen, Julia Child demystified French cooking for American audiences. She became, in the words of the New York Times, "the French chef for a Jello nation." The exhibit is titled "Bon Appétit!" — as she signed off at the end of every show she hosted during her 38 years as a television icon.

Viewers of the film, "Julie and Julia" (the former was a whining Amherst College graduate: nuff said) will be familiar with the backstory behind the first great cookbook, but just in case, Mass Moments explains:

She fell in love with French food and enrolled in the prestigious Cordon Bleu culinary school. In 1952 she and two Frenchwomen formed a cooking school and began writing a French cookbook for American readers.

In 1956 the Childs returned to the U.S. and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Julia Child continued work on the book, communicating frequently with her French partners. When Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961, with 734 pages of detailed but unintimidating recipes, it was a critical and popular success. In an era when American "cuisine" consisted of cake mixes, TV dinners, and health food crazes, the book made sophisticated French food not only appealing but accessible. Child ignored fads, and Americans embraced her "cuisine soignée: long, caring cooking."

My mother was a good cook, but by no means a gourmet. Still, Julia Child's first great book was one of the main cookbooks in our kitchen. I believe it was a present from my father.

When I learned to cook (mostly while I was a grad student: it seemed preferable to bankruptcy or starvation), I bought myself a copy, too. (Later, my mother gave me more recent Julia Child books as presents.)

The original installation, pictured above, closed in early 2012 and, to mark the centennial of Child's birth, was reinterpreted later that year as the focus of a new exhibition, "FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000."

It seems fitting: just as the Choate house chronicled the lives and material culture of ordinary people "who were not famous," so, too, her kitchen helps to chronicle the transformation of the way that all of us eat and think about food.  There is more than one way for history to happen in the kitchen.

Bon appétit.



Footnote:

Local connection: The pioneering chef was a graduate of Smith College (history major, I am proud to say), which celebrates a Julia Child Day. In fact, I recall meals at the former Faculty Club where we were served a special "Julia Child" label house wine.

Resources

• Bon Appétit! Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian
• 10 Crucial Facts About the Julia Child's Kitchen Exhibit, Reopening Tomorrow, Washington Eater staff, 14 August 2012 (includes video of the conservation and reinstallation process)

[updated 26 August; full piece did not post the first time]

April 13, 1943: Nazis Announce Discovery of Mass Grave of Murdered Poles at Katyń

In April-May 1940, the security services of Stalin’s Soviet Union, which had concluded a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939 and then occupied the eastern part of Poland after the Germans invaded from the west in September, murdered some 22,000 Poles--soldiers, intelligentsia, and other suspect classes--at Katyń forest near Smolensk and other locations.

On April 13, 1943, the Nazis, acting on rumors from locals, announced the discovery of one mass grave at Katyń forest near Smolensk. The Soviets emphatically denied the charges. The incident led to a break in relations between the London Polish Government-in-Exile and the Soviet regime.

The incident long remained controversial, as the Soviets insisted that these were the victims of German occupiers. In fact, I recall my father saying that, while he was serving with the US occupation forces in Germany (OMGUS), he found Germans testifying to "terrible crimes" they had committed in that area, which no one was willing to address.

The forensic evidence seemed contradictory, as the victims were killed with German bullets but tied with Russian ropes, but eventually, the weight of the evidence clearly tipped the scales in favor of a Soviet crime. It was only half a century later, in the Gorbachev reform era, that the Russian government acknowledged responsibility for the crime


This illustrated magazine, produced by the Nazi regime, conveyed the news to the occupied Polish population in May, 1943. The cover is a harmless depiction of the lobster harvest in Martinique (which was then under the control of the Vichy French regime).

Without warning, the next page reveals the horror of the Katyń massacre--conveyed through a Nazi propaganda lens.

Amherst Irish Association Launches Series of Events

On February 1, the new Amherst Irish Association held its inaugural event featuring a talk by Boston Globe reporter (and UMass alumnus) Kevin Cullen (@GlobeCullen) on "Irish Matters: A Journalist's Journey" at the Amherst Unitarian Universalist Society.

Association co-founder íde B. O'Carroll, speaking in both English and Gaelic, introduced Mr. Cullen, whose credentials include covering the conflict in Northern Ireland for over two decades, Pullitzer-prize-winning reporting of the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, numerous stories and a best-selling book on the hunt for mobster Whitey Bulger, and, most recently, award-winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing and trial of the accused perpetrator Dzokhar Tsarnaev.

 Mr. Cullen began by reading the Select Board's proclamation of the first annual Irish Day.

The time was roughly divided between the formal talk and a free-ranging discussion with the audience.

Topics that came up in the latter included the changes that Mr. Cullen had seen in Ireland over the years, from the performance of the Irish economy to Sinn Féin's electoral prospects in the south, and closer to home, the Bulger and Tsarnaev trials.

In the context of the latter, Mr. Cullen praised Twitter as a journalist's tool. Although, he quipped, his steady stream of coverage lost him some followers--"People say, 'I don't want 300 tweets a day about some guy picking his nose in the jury box'"--he found it an invaluable way to cover events first as they happen and then in more systematic and distilled fashion afterward. Because it was impossible to provide real-time coverage and take detailed notes at the same time, Twitter in effect became his notebook, for he went back to his Twitter stream and used the tweets as the skeleton for his subsequent full-fledged articles.


Even death is an occasion for a good joke

Known for his dry wit and ironic view of the world as well as his reporting, Mr. Cullen immediately earned a laugh from the audience with a joke about Unitarians. Noting that he was taking a risk by being somewhat mischievous given the setting, he suggested that it was a trait he had inherited from this father. He recalled how, as a Boston Irish Catholic, he first learned about Unitarians. His father took him to the funeral of a fireman acquaintance, who happened to be Unitarian. The boy asked what Unitarians were. The father explained and then said: "You know what you call a Unitarian in a casket? All dressed up and no place to go."  During the Q & A, Mr. Cullen managed to find humor in another topic involving mortality. Asked whether he had ever feared for his life while covering the pursuit and trial of notorious mobster and murderer Whitey Bulger, he shrugged, "What's he gonna do--throw a box of Depends at me? He's, like, 84 years old."

Irish-American pols old and new get the job done

The bulk of the formal talk, derived from a Globe piece last fall, was devoted to reflections on the changing profile of the Irish-American politician, from quintessential old-time Boston machine politico James Michael Curley to contemporary figures such as newly elected Boston Mayor Martin Walsh and former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (often spoken of as a potential Democratic presidential candidate). There were good reasons and historical circumstances, he said, behind the stereotype of the Irish machine politician.

As Cullen observed, the Irish, having faced vicious discrimination, saw the solution in electing their own. Being a good politician meant providing patronage: getting things done for constituents. At times, this approach collided with the ethics of the system or at least the groups that dominated it.

The clash of cultures was epitomized by the incident in which Mayor Curley impersonated an immigrant in order to take his civil service examination for him. As Cullen explained, "The Brahmins were horrified; the Irish and other working-class Europeans who would become his core voters loved him":

Curley went to jail for that impersonation, but as a political act it was priceless. The good government types were so appalled by Curley’s antics that after he became mayor of Boston in 1914 for the first of four terms, the gentle women of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay descended into the working-class enclaves of Charlestown and South Boston, to promote reform candidates who would beat back the Irish political machine.

Legend has it that one of these gentle ladies knocked on a door in Southie and was greeted by an Irishwoman holding a wash bucket. The nice lady from Beacon Hill asked the woman of the house to consider voting for her brother, one of the reformers taking on the Curley machine. When asked if her brother would be giving her a job if he won, the gentle lady from Beacon Hill was aghast. “Absolutely not,” she huffed. “That would be improper.”

The lady of the house sniffed, turned up her nose and said, “Why would I vote for a guy who wouldn’t give his own sister a job?”

Later, when the Irish no longer dominated the population, the would-be Irish politician had to come up with a new approach and voter base:

It has taken more than a generation for this phenomenon to take hold, and in that time the definition of an Irish pol has undergone a massive transformation. Being an Irish pol, for good and bad, has less to do with race and religion, more to do with sensibilities and culture.

Cullen pointed to several figures who epitomized this change. State Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, who hosts the annual Saint Patrick's Day brunch, has an old Boston Irish husband--and Haitian parents. However, he singled out the two Martys--Marty Walsh and Marty O'Malley--as exemplars of the transformation. Walsh, he noted, is the first mayor with parents who were not English-speakers: they spoke Gaelic and came to the US only in 1950. Although Walsh is thus among the most "Irish" of politicians, his worldview and politics are anything but inward-looking. He feels close to the Boston Irish, but also to the immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia who make up his working-class constituency. Said Cullen: "He really does identify with minorities, with new immigrants. He says: these are my parents."

It was an instructive lesson and a hopeful message with which to begin a series dedicated to cross-cultural exchange.

 * * *

Following the lecture and discussion, the crowd adjourned to the social hall for tea and home-made scones and musical entertainment.

Rosemary Caine plays the harp

Emma Conrad-Rooney and Delia Mahoney perform Irish dance

Coming up next month:

Antonia Moore (introduced by Sam Hannigan), speaking on:

"From the Blasket Islands, County Kerry, to Hungry Hill, Springfield"

#JeSuisCharlie #JeSuisAhmed #JeSuisJuif

Watching the nonstop news coverage of the jihadi terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Kosher market as well as the extraordinary demonstrations of French crosscultural solidarity and international support for free speech and secular democracy, I was reminded of a few images from French history, which I posted on the tumblr.


France: All Are Equal Before The Law

France: An Example to the Peoples of the World

France: Over Two Centuries of Jewish Emancipation