Emma Boast
Emma Boast, an art history major with a lifelong passion for food, might just have the perfect job for her two interests: she is the program director at the Museum of Food and Drink, a growing non-profit dedicated to educational programs and exhibitions about food.
Emma’s passion for art predates her four years at the University of Chicago. Growing up in New York City, she spent many Friday afternoons sketching in a museum. “I went to a lot of museums growing up and had always found them to be a really important part of my learning in addition to school, particularly in high school as I became more interested in art,” she said.
Despite her time-consuming art history studies at UChicago, she made sure to explore her other passion: food. A constant presence in the kitchen with her parents growing up, she spent her summers staging, or interning, in restaurants and bakeries in New York City and Chicago. One summer, she trimmed green beans, made sandwiches, and stirred huge vats of salad dressing at the City Bakery in Manhattan. A year later, she formed cookies and made ice cream base at Chicago’s Hot Chocolate when she wasn’t maintaining the garden and running the compost program at the Angelic Organics Learning Center. She also helped a neighbor, food writer Melissa Clark, with a cookbook project for which much of her time was spent converting measurements into the metric system.
“Sometimes there would be one cup of diced Asian pear. Well, I’d have to go buy an Asian pear and dice it and measure out a cup and see how much that weighed. It was interesting introduction to the world of cookbook writing,” she said.
Despite her experiences in the food and art fields, Emma remained unsure of her next move after graduating. “Initially,” she said, “I felt like somehow, despite having gotten what I felt was a great education, I was totally unprepared for the real world.” She moved back home and found fierce competition for the food justice Americorps positions she was interested in. She interned at Saveur, helped with an educational cooking program, and then boarded a plane to Japan, a country she had fallen in love with while visiting her boyfriend at the time. She would live there for two years, working in a hospital and helping Japanese physicians prepare their work for English-language presentations and publications. “As with any of these decisions, sure, do I wonder what might have been had I stayed in New York? Perhaps, but without a doubt, it was probably one of the best decisions of my life.”
When Emma returned to New York, she had no idea what she was going to do. “I definitely had a lot of doubts because my resume, when you read it, it looks completely disjointed,” she said. “There was no defined path. I was really dabbling a lot. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
At the Museum of Food and Drink, which she first became involved with as a volunteer, Emma has been able to merge her two interests and work on a wide range of projects for the growing organization. At MOFAD, Emma’s work includes extensive research into breakfast cereal for the museum’s first exhibition, “Boom! The Puffing Gun and the Rise of Cereal,” as well as talks about controversial food issues such as the New York City soda ban.
Highlights
Choosing between Reed College and the University of Chicago: I often wonder what might have been if I have moved out there [to Portland.] Maybe I would own a food truck or something.
What you can do with an art history degree: [Museums] were a formative place for me growing up, and I think I was not really interested in becoming a professor or going into academia, but perhaps using art historical training to broadening that knowledge base for other people of what art is.
Life after graduation: It was pretty terrifying. I mean, the whole summer after graduating was kind of difficult because the adrenaline of having finished my thesis and just celebrating graduation with all my friends just dropped off, and I felt that I lacked structure in a way that I wasn’t used to.