adult program

1. Adult or Family Audience | Museum Education Program Planning Template | HST 389: Museum Education & Living
History
ANDREA SERNA
SMITHSONIAN NATURAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY
FOOD: Transforming the American Table
https://americanhistory.si.edu/food?utm_source=siedu&utm_medium=referral&ut
m_campaign=exhibitions
“To Your Dining Table: Defining Moments in American Kitchen”
In 100 words, summarize the content and goals of the existing exhibit, and state simply how your museum
education program will intervene/enter in.
You may select any current/on-going exhibit that you have access to; either virtually (through an
extensive virtual exhibit) or physically (depending on where you are located right now during the
pandemic).
The existing exhibit is an online exhibition run by the Smithsonian Natural Museum of American History. The exhibit
features five sections: Julia Child’s Kitchen, New and Improved!, Resetting the Table, Brewing a Revolution, and
Wine for the Table. The exhibition was originally featured on the first floor of the museum in 2012, and, according to
the museum’s website, the online exhibit features both the original version of the physical exhibit and newer content
additions that reflect research around food and migration, health and nutrition, brewing history, and Mexican
American winemaking families. My museum education program will take both versions of the exhibit, the original
physical version and the newer online version, and intervene by providing an interactive way for adult audiences to
understand the history of food in American society.
PROGRAM PLAN OVERVIEW
Use this overview section to define your specific audience and elaborate on the above to explain the plan for
your Museum Education Program. You might think of this section as the section that would be used for
marketing purposes, to get the public excited about taking part in this program.
The program will first go through the exhibit, and then the program leaders will walk adults through cooking a simple
recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child that released in 1961. Adults will then sample the food
they made and then bake a simple dessert recipe from the Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes booklet from 1966.
Adults will sample what they baked then sample beer from New Albion. The program will conclude with a
question-and-answer session about the surrounding history of cooking and food in contemporary American culture.
Because the program involves handling food and cooking appliance/heat and drinking alcohol, the specific audience
for this museum education program is adults over 21 years of age. Additionally, attendees must answer if they have
any food allergies in order to ensure their health and safety.
Overarching Objective
One sentence that describes what the program is about.
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2. Adult or Family Audience | Museum Education Program Planning Template | HST 389: Museum Education & Living
History
This program is an interactive cooking/baking event that allows for its guests to learn about the history of cooking
and food in American society during the 20th
century.
Logistics & Program Structure
Include program length, group size, information about staff/volunteer needs, projected number of times the
program would run and when, and anything else you can think of that would relate to this subheading. For your
program, are there stops on a labor history bus tour led by a costumed interpreter? You’ll need a bus, and you’ll
need a costume, and you’ll need a trained interpreter! Is there a beer tasting from different local beer breweries
as part of an exhibit about 19th
century taverns? You’ll need to coordinate with local breweries, right? How are
you going to serve those drinks? How will you screen for age? Are you planning on having families interview
each other and record their interviews, as part of an exhibit that features oral history? How will you record
those? Will it be quiet enough for everyone to do that? Think through all of the logistical steps that planners
would need to make your program happen.
● The program length will run for about 6 hours. The first hour will be touring the exhibit, the following 3 hours will
be cooking and baking, the following hour will be sampling the New Albion beer, and the last hour will be a
question-and-answer session.
● The group size will be limited because of the nature of cooking and baking. The maximum people allowed would
be 25 people at a time, and groups are encouraged to attend together. During the cooking and baking portion,
attendees will be placed in groups of 5.
● The staff/volunteers will need access to Julia Child’s cookbook and the Pillsbury baking pamphlet to pick simple
recipes from both for the audience to do. Staff will also need basic kitchen safety training to ensure the safety of
the group, and staff will need adequate training in making both recipes in case the attendees have any
questions. Additionally, staff will need to coordinate with New Albion brewery to get beer samples to the site of
the program. Lastly, staff will need to make sure that attendees are over the ages of 21.
● Due to budget costs surrounding the items necessary for cooking, baking, and sampling beer, the program will
most likely have a limit on how many times it can run. For the sake of this project, the program will run twice a
week for one month.
PROGRAM OUTLINE FOR ADULT AUDIENCE
Provide specific details about how your program will run for your adult or family museum education program. As
with the school program, include set up, times, materials needed, material culture drawn on, and any additional
relevant information that would help
● The program will begin with an hour-long tour of the exhibit. Before it begins, however, program leaders will
have to set-up the cooking and baking portion of the program before hand and have all of the necessary
ingredients and equipment ready at all of the five stations.
● The main cooking and baking portion of the program draws from material culture and artifacts from the
exhibition such as Mary Sue Milliken’s knife bag, Julia Child’s crème brule blow torch, and other innovative
technological advancements that allowed for cooking to reach new levels. The attendees will first cook a
simple recipe, then bake a simple recipe and eat both dishes for this three-hour section.
o For the cooking portion, attendees will cook a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by
Julia Child that released in 1961.
o For the baking portion, attendees will bake a recipe from The Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off
Recipes booklet from 1966.
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3. Adult or Family Audience | Museum Education Program Planning Template | HST 389: Museum Education & Living
History
● The next portion of this program draws from material culture and artifacts such as home brewing textbooks
and recipes from Michael Lewis and Fritz Maytag from the mid-1900s. Because of the time-consuming
nature of brewing, the program does not allow for attendees to brew on the spot. However, in this hour-long
section, attendees will sample New Albion beer, which revolutionized breweries in the 1970s.
● The program will conclude with an hour-long question and answer portion where attendees will have the
opportunity to ask museum exhibit curators and program leaders any questions they may have about the
exhibit. Attendees will be allowed to take home the recipes they cooked and baked, as well as any left-over
food they may have.
Rationale
Describe your reasons for developing the project as you have proposed it. You may need to justify why you
have chosen your unique approach. Consider including the following points in your rationale.
● I have decided to develop this museum program as a hands-on cooking and baking experience because I
believe this will engage the attendees in a way that also teaches them about the contemporary history of
American food and culture. Through this interactive and creative program, attendees will be placed in the shoes
of Julia Child, an iconic chef, and others who just cooked and baked in their own kitchens in the mid 1900s.
Additionally, this program relates to the exhibition’s goal of exploring changes within technology and shifts in
social and cultural life.
BUDGET
Include projected items that would need to be purchased for this project to function; you do not need to include
staffing costs, or marketing, etc. Also, you don’t need to include the costs for any of these items (although, yes, in a
budget, you normally would). I simply want you to think through and include what a site/museum would need for
EACH program to run [i.e., so this cost would be per program. So if you needed to rent a tour bus every time you
ran the program, list that, rather than listing the 10 bus rentals that you would project would be needed over time. ☺
]
● The online museum exhibit did not include the contents of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking
or from the Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes booklet.
o 5 portions of necessary ingredients for a recipe from Mastering the Art of French Cooking
o 5 portions of necessary ingredients for a recipe from the Pillsbury Busy Lady Bake-Off Recipes
booklet
● 5 sets of necessary cooking and baking appliances: a stove, an oven, a refrigerator, a sink with running
water, any necessary spoons, plates, bowls, pots, pans, baking sheets/tins, cups.
● Cleaning equipment such as towels, disinfectant, dish soap, sponges.
● 25 New Albion beers
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