2022 Smithsonian Food History Gala

Smithsonian Food History Gala

Invitation to the 2024 Smithsonian Food History Gala

Tenth Annual Food History Gala

Thursday, October 17, 2024

We're kicking off another exciting Smithsonian Food History Weekend with the 10th annual Food History Gala, in support of the Smithsonian Food History Project! Join us for an elegant evening featuring the presentation of the Julia Child Award by The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts to this year's recipient, Alice Waters.

Waters has been a champion of local, organic agriculture for over four decades. In 1971, she founded the groundbreaking Chez Panisse, a neighborhood restaurant in Berkeley, California, that offered a single menu each day featuring local produce and fresh ingredients. She founded the Edible Schoolyard Project in 1995, a program that has been replicated in over 6,000 schools around the world.

We are pleased to announce that tickets for this year’s gala are now sold out. We are incredibly grateful for the overwhelming support from our community. Your participation in this event helps sustain the Smithsonian Food History Project’s mission to explore and preserve America’s rich culinary heritage.

Although ticket sales have closed, we encourage you to stay engaged with the Smithsonian Food History Weekend and follow along as we share highlights from this exciting event. Thank you for your support in helping us continue to tell the stories behind America's food traditions.

Alice Waters

About Alice Waters, 2024 Julia Child Award Recipient
Alice Waters in the Kitchen with Students by Amanda Marsalis

Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist, and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California, which first opened its doors in 1971. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free regenerative organic school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school.

She has been Vice President of Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome in 2007. Her honors include election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007; the Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award, which she shared with Kofi Annan in 2008; induction into the French Legion of Honor in 2010; and induction into the National Woman’s hall of Fame in 2017. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act, and that the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change. Most recently, Alice was awarded the honor of “Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana” in 2019, and in 2022 she received the Henry Ford Society’s inaugural Carver Carson Award recognizing achievements and innovations in environmental protection and agriculture.

Alice is the author of sixteen books, including New York Times bestsellers, The Art of Simple Food I & II, The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea, and, a memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook. Her newest book is We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto.

The Julia Child Foundation and Award

The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts was created by Julia in 1995 and began operating in 2004. Its mission is to honor and further Julia’s legacy, which centers on the importance of understanding where food comes from, what makes for good food, and the value of cooking. Headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, the Foundation is a non-profit which makes grants to support culinary history research, scholarships for culinary training, food writing and food media as well as professional development and food literacy programs. In 2015, the Foundation created the Julia Child Award, presented in association with the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The annual Award honors an individual (or team) who has made a profound and significant difference in the way America cooks, eats and drinks and is accompanied by a $50,000 grant from the Foundation to a food-related non-profit selected by the recipient. The Foundation has made more than $3 million in grants to other non-profits, including $500,000 in connection with the Award.

Learn more about the Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts and the Julia Child Award.

 

About our programs

Julia Child Award

We hope that you will help support food history programming at the National Museum of American History. By becoming a donor, you will be supporting the important new initiatives of the Smithsonian Food History Project, which will help us to continue our paid internship program which provides mentoring and professional learning experiences to candidates from communities that are underrepresented in the museum and food history fields. Internships are an important way to build inclusive museums in the future.

 

The Food History Curatorial internship gave me the opportunity to learn about the many facets of museum work, build relationships with fellow interns and staff, collect oral histories, and contribute to museum programming, such as Cooking Up History and Food History Weekend. What I learned from during my time at NMAH continues to support my passion for telling stories through food!

Marsha Ungchusri (2019 Intern)