Henry Voigt on American Menus VIRTUAL COMPONENT CANCELLED

Sponsored by The Grolier Club

NOTE: The virtual component of this event has been canceled. In conjunction with the “Century of Dining Out” exhibition, the Grolier Club will host renowned scholar Paul Freedman on Wednesday, June 21, at 6pm EDT, as he lectures on “How Dining Out Changed, 1841-1941.” Virtual attendance is available:

Virtual: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-paul-freedman-on-how-dining-out-changed-1841-1941-tickets-609633037827

“A Century of Dining Out: The American Story in Menus, 1841-1941” from the Collection of Henry Voigt. The exhibition runs April 26 through July 29, 2023.

Menus are minor, transient documents that tell us how people have dined outside the home over time. They transport us back to the everyday life of the past – whether to a lavish banquet in the Gilded Age or a food-relief eatery during the Great Depression. They aid our cultural memory by providing historical evidence, not only of what people were eating, but what else they were doing and with whom they were doing it; and what they valued.

They came into general use in the United States in the 1840s, when hotels and restaurants began to replace the old inns and taverns that served a limited choice of domestic-style meals. Dining among strangers in quasi-public spaces became a new and novel kind of entertainment in which the menu played a central role, offering diners choice and anticipation for the first time. They suddenly appeared in all types of venues and forms of transportation.

Since menus reflect all aspects of society, it was possible to weave a literary thread through the exhibition, including rare examples from a haunt of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain’s seventieth birthday party at Delmonico’s, and a long-forgotten reception for French zoologist Paul B. Du Chaillu in the New Mexico Territory. The annual dinners of the American Bookseller’s Association and the Bibliophilic Society recall the social world of book dealers and prominent collectors in New York at the turn of the last century.

The menu is an art form that aims to please. While most were intended for short term use and not meant to be saved, others were finely crafted by high-society stationers such as Tiffany’s and Dempsey & Carroll. However, even when kept as personal momentos, they were frequently discarded by later generations for whom they had no special meaning. As with other types of ephemera, part of their appeal lies within the notion of their improbable survival.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-henry-voigt-on-american-menus-tickets-574802157727?aff=ebdsoporgprofile