Julia Child’s Kitchen | New England’s Gifts
Thousands of viewers tuned in to see Julia Child’s kitchen, which they saw as an extension of their own, and where they came to be instructed and entertained.
Photo Credit : Smithsonian photograph by Richard Strauss
Even though she’s been gone since 2004, Julia Child remains America’s sauciest and most famous chef. Her larger-than-life personality—which found its voice first in her epic book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, then grew to a crescendo with her popular public TV shows—had its natural backdrop in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen. Thousands of viewers tuned in to see Julia Child’s kitchen (designed for her by her husband, Paul), which they saw as an extension of their own, and where they came to be instructed and, above all, entertained.
In 2001, when Julia, nearing 90, announced that she was returning to family roots in California, a three-person team from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History hustled to see her. Paula Johnson, a curator with a special interest in the intersection of food and culture, was there. Today the kitchen is the centerpiece of the exhibition FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950–2000, but when Johnson arrived in Cambridge, all that was still but a wishful dream. “We walked in the door,” she said, “and we’d been imagining a few objects. But when we saw the entire thing, we had a curatorial ‘mindmeld.’ We wanted it all! The kitchen revealed so much about Julia and her message. We talked with her about 5 million visitors coming through to see this, and she said yes to the American people.”
Within a few months more than 1,200 objects in 55 crates and boxes—stoves, gleaming copper pots, knives, all of it—found their way to the museum, where, when assembled, they quickly became one of the most popular exhibits. “We said, ‘Let’s unpack in front of the public,’” Johnson recalled. “We took turns going out to talk to people. People told us what Julia had meant to them.”
And when her kitchen opened to the public in August 2002, Julia Child was there.
Mel Allen
Mel Allen is the fifth editor of Yankee Magazine since its beginning in 1935. His first byline in Yankee appeared in 1977 and he joined the staff in 1979 as a senior editor. Eventually he became executive editor and in the summer of 2006 became editor. During his career he has edited and written for every section of the magazine, including home, food, and travel, while his pursuit of long form story telling has always been vital to his mission as well. He has raced a sled dog team, crawled into the dens of black bears, fished with the legendary Ted Williams, profiled astronaut Alan Shephard, and stood beneath a battleship before it was launched. He also once helped author Stephen King round up his pigs for market, but that story is for another day. Mel taught fourth grade in Maine for three years and believes that his education as a writer began when he had to hold the attention of 29 children through months of Maine winters. He learned you had to grab their attention and hold it. After 12 years teaching magazine writing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, he now teaches in the MFA creative nonfiction program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Like all editors, his greatest joy is finding new talent and bringing their work to light.
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