In the 1960s, grocery store shelves, magazines, cookbooks, and TV cooking shows reflected a growing American fascination with food from overseas. Soldiers and foreign service workers traveled the world, tourists enjoyed newly accessible air travel, and visitors to world's fairs were greeted with Americanized iterations of global cuisines and model kitchens that echoed the (mostly imagined) design trends of other cultures.

 

In this presentation, Sarah Archer explores the American fascination with worldly culinary culture and how it helped to transform the midcentury kitchen into a vessel of exploration. This lecture complements the exhibition Midcentury Menu: Dining in the Atomic Age.