Photo: Jaclyn Nash | National Museum of American History
The Julia Child Awards are given every year at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. The recipients are honored for their role in pushing American food into new realms and changing the way we look at cooking. Part of the award is that the winners all donate objects from their lives that help tell the story of their careers. Those items - notebooks, menus, cooking equipment, even typewriters - go into the museum’s collections, to be immortalized. Paula Johnson is a curator at the museum and that director of its American Food and Wine History Project. (Yes, she may just have one of the coolest jobs in the food world!) She talked with Francis Lam about working one-on-one with the honorees to decide what items and artifacts to contribute.
See the video below to learn more about how the Julia Child Foundation selects its annual award winners. The museum was also kind enough to share with us the photos below from the collections of previous Julia Child Award winners Jacques Pépin, Danny Meyer, and Rick Bayless.
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Francis Lam is the host of The Splendid Table. He is the former Eat columnist for The New York Times Magazine and is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Clarkson Potter. He graduated first in his class at the Culinary Institute of America and has written for numerous publications. Lam lives with his family in New York City.