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Transcription: {SPEAKER name="Rayna Green"}
[00:14:10]
There is no hair and makeup pose
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There is absolutely no guile in what she was doing, but she knew to do all the sort-of silly things that she did would
[00:14:22]
entertain people and make them happy and she was not above a really low shot either
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my favorite, uh, one of my favorite, pieces of hers is when she makes a whole roast suckling pig
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and in the end she shows you how to tuck the tail just in the back of the pig.
[00:14:43]
She says, 'Well look, there's this little convenient place to put the tail.'
[00:14:48]
[[laughter]] y'know , so she knew she could have fun with the audience and she
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knew that, she knew at work those phones never stopped ringing, and in all the portraits
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of her, you can really- you can begin to see that. But I think that we also see the other thing,
[00:15:04]
that I do believe she taught us here which was to care about the food we put in our mouths, we
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began to see people pay attention. She never was a snob by the way, about the food, she
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used what she could get on American grocery shelves, which was not the same as what you get in the fridge markets.
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She had some ordinary favorites of things, and she would tell people about them. But she would also
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tell people about things that they weren't eating, and that were strange to them. Her grocer
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in Cambridge used to say that, y'know, if Julia served broccoli, y'know, on the evening show,
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he would be sold out of broccoli, [[laughter]] y'know by the end.
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That big ol' whisk that she introduced to us, y'know, became a best seller, and she loved to-
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she loved to pose with giant versions of those things. We have any number of pictures. And we have
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some of her actual props from the TV show. She would get a giant whisk this big.
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She would get a huge knife, 'I call it my fright knife deary.' [[laughter]]
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This gigantic knife, and do total slap stick with them because she knew they would get attention, and yet at the
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same time she was teaching us to use the good chef's knives and teaching us to use
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y'know, the correct pairing knife and tools that would help us actually make something better.
[00:16:37]
So, I have- I think what I want to stress is that I like the ordinary-ness of what we see here.
[00:16:46]
This is not a picture of- this is not a glamour shot, and in fact, there are very
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few glamour shots of Julia. They're usually of her just like this, tasting something, cooking
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something, enjoying something, and bringing us into that circle. I like the intimacy of
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it, and that's what you get. It's remarkable to us when people come into the kitchen
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they stand in these crowds, and it gets really crowded. They talk to each other.
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It's a kitchen, after all, and they comment on what they have, that Julia did,
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they talk to each other, they tell jokes, they do the Julia voice. They accept the intimacy
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that she created, and of course the kitchen is filled with her voice, I mean really her voice.
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Even the labels of some of them are in her voice. And- And you're surrounded by that world
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that she created for us, which seems to still have an audience and I think that persistence
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tells us that we want that- that authenticity, we want that openness, that intimacy that she lets us have.
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It ain't the red carpet, it's not the glamour shot, it's nothing but Julia Child. And it's nothing but a kitchen,
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But it's Julia's kitchen. It's nothing but- 'It's a bowl of salad, people.'[Laughter] But, she actually taught us how to make that dressing.
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And I'm grateful for it, y'know, everyday when I do a vinaigrette I'm happy that I
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learned it from Julia, even though cooking from Mastering the Art of French Cooking when I was
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26 and trying to impress my graduate professor, terrified me. But as Julia always told us,
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'If you do what I say and just follow me, you can do it' And I think that's the, 'You can do it'
[00:19:04]
moment that we see in all these portraits and I am thrilled. The gallery, by the way, has several others
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of Julia, there're two beautiful Hans Noymen silver prints of her and Paul, there's a
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very funny, quirky portrait, which you've probably- uh can't remember the guy, Boris, um-
[00:19:27]
It was painted for Time, she was on the cover of Time, and it's got a fish and all these other things around her.
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So they have quite a few nice things of our girl, and, uh, and then you can come over to American
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history and see more. If you really want to see more you can go up to Schlesinger library at Radcliff
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where all her papers are and where all of Paul's photographs are.
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And were seeing more of them right now because of the interest in her published and so you, bit by bit,
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you're seeing all of these things sort of appear, years later, after the fact, because she still has that kind of, that kind of
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resonance. So I know you're all gonna go home and whip up a omelet or vinaigrette- I still can't do
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the omelet right. It still comes out like scrambled eggs, but I know she watching.
[00:20:24]
Yeah?
[00:20:26]
{SPEAKER name='Audience Member"}
So-
[00:20:27]

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-02 19:06:19