The kitchen is the heart of the home. It can be filled with memories of friends and family, the smell of cookies baking, spaghetti sauce simmering, coffee brewing, and children’s first performances. The tools on the walls or in the drawers evoke memories that last forever. Kathleen Thompson Hill’s collection of over 3,000 kitchen utensils offers a stroll down memory lane, as well as an education about the evolution of the kitchen gadgets we use today. This exhibition presented some of the collection’s highlights, from cheese graters to cracker tins to egg beaters. More than just examples of domestic activities, the collection mirrors the cultural and technological history of the country through the years.
The items selected for this exhibition were ones that would have been found in Marin kitchens like those belonging to Caroline Livermore and the other founders of the Marin Art & Garden Center, when they established the Center in 1945. Food was always part of the strategy for supporting the Center, and in the early days there were teas, lunches, and even a cafe run by volunteers to raise funds. This exhibition ran in The Studio from March 22 to April 27, 2019.
