BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Taking America to Lunch

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Taking America to Lunch:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Description of Pictures: Taking America to Lunch
Ongoing
Lower Level, in Stars and Stripes Cafe
This display case celebrates the history and endurance of American lunch boxes. Reaching the height of their popularity at the dawn of the television era, lunch box sales became barometers for what was hip in popular culture at any point in time. Included in the display are more than 50 objects drawn from the Museum’s collection of children’s and workers illustrated metal lunch boxes and beverage containers dating from the 1890s through the 1980s. Which one is your favorite?

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show? [Slideshow]

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] LUNCH_221210_001.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[2] LUNCH_221210_005.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[3] LUNCH_221210_008.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[4] LUNCH_221210_012.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[5] LUNCH_221210_015.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[6] LUNCH_221210_017.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[7] LUNCH_221210_019.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[8] LUNCH_221210_021.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[9] LUNCH_221210_026.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[10] LUNCH_221210_029.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[11] LUNCH_221210_032.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[12] LUNCH_221210_036.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[13] LUNCH_221210_038.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[14] LUNCH_221210_043.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[15] LUNCH_221210_045.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[16] LUNCH_221210_048.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[17] LUNCH_221210_049.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[18] LUNCH_221210_052.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[19] LUNCH_221210_055.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[20] LUNCH_221210_058.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[21] LUNCH_221210_062.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[22] LUNCH_221210_064.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[23] LUNCH_221210_068.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[24] LUNCH_221210_070.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[25] LUNCH_221210_073.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[26] LUNCH_221210_075.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[27] LUNCH_221210_077.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[28] LUNCH_221210_081.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[29] LUNCH_221210_083.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[30] LUNCH_221210_085.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[31] LUNCH_221210_088.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[32] LUNCH_221210_091.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[33] LUNCH_221210_093.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[34] LUNCH_221210_096.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[35] LUNCH_221210_098.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[36] LUNCH_221210_101.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[37] LUNCH_221210_102.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[38] LUNCH_221210_104.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[39] LUNCH_221210_107.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[40] LUNCH_221210_109.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[41] LUNCH_221210_112.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[42] LUNCH_221210_113.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[43] LUNCH_221210_116.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[44] LUNCH_221210_118.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[45] LUNCH_221210_120.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[46] LUNCH_221210_123.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[47] LUNCH_221210_125.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[48] LUNCH_221210_131.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[49] LUNCH_221210_134.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[50] LUNCH_221210_135.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[51] LUNCH_221210_136.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[52] LUNCH_221210_138.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[53] LUNCH_221210_140.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[54] LUNCH_221210_141.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[55] LUNCH_221210_142.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[56] LUNCH_221210_145.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[57] LUNCH_221210_149.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[58] LUNCH_221210_150.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[59] LUNCH_221210_154.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[60] LUNCH_221210_156.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[61] LUNCH_221210_157.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[62] LUNCH_221210_158.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[63] LUNCH_221210_161.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)
[64] LUNCH_221210_164.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[65] LUNCH_221210_169.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)	[66] LUNCH_221210_173.JPG Medium (Email) (Bigger?)

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LUNCH_221210_005.JPG: The First Generation American industrial workers have often carried their lunch in plain metal buckets. From the mid-19th century, miners, factory workers, dockhands, and other laborers used sturdy dinner pails to hold boiled vegetables, meat, coffee, pie, and other hardy fare. In 1904, new Thermos vacuum bottles began keeping worker's drinks hot or cold until the noon whistle blew.
2. LUNCH_221210_017.JPG: School Days Parents one hundred years ago often gave their schoolchildren an empty tobacco or coffee tin to carry some fresh-picked fruit, bread, a wedge of cheese, and perhaps a handful of shelled nuts. Some children carried their food in a store-bought lunch pail or a paper sack. Other children brought no midday meal.
3. LUNCH_221210_036.JPG: Taking America to Lunch For generations, the lunch containers many of us hauled to school and work have reflected American culture. Of all the bags, boxes, trays, cans, and cartons we have carried over the past century, the most message-laden is the metal lunch box. This section of boxes and their drink containers from the collections of the National Museum of American History explores that colorful heritage.
4. LUNCH_221210_049.JPG: The Other Box Television transformed the lunch box from an ordinary food conveyance into a storyteller. Beginning in the 1950s, the screen-like sides of the lunch box offered children a new form of self-expression. Box makers paid for the right to use TV shows to promote box sales. The studios used boxes to gain market exposure. And children acquired a new statement of their power and influence in the emerging world of mass-marketed consumer goods.
5. LUNCH_221210_073.JPG: Cowboys and Astronauts Comic books, radio shows, and television introduced a cast of action characters to American schoolchildren. Fearless champions of a mythical Old West joined with explorers of outer space no the illustrated metal lunch box and its companion drink container. The steel box had reached its ideal form. Innovation shifted from the box to the action swirling around the outside. Manufacturers competed for rights to the latest horseback hero, fearless crime fighter, or Martian maiden.
6. LUNCH_221210_120.JPG: Cool Lunches and a Cold War As grade-school children became teenagers, box makers devised new themes to keep boxes selling. Music groups, hit movies, athletes, TV thrillers, and wild geometric patterns added zip to boxes of the 1970s. Cold War boxes displayed scenes of combat, heavy weaponry, and stealthy foreign intrigue. By the mid-1980s, box makers had replaced steel with less costly materials. The era of the metal lunch box was over for all but the collectors.
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: ) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2023_DC_SIAH_Mirror: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Mirror, Mirror for Us All: Disney Parks and the American Narrative / Experience (146 photos from 2023)
- 2023_09_19A5_SIAH_More_Perfect: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: A More Perfect Union: American Artists and the Currents of Our Time (134 photos from 09/19/2023)
- 2023_09_17D2_SIAH_Holzer: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Jenny Holzer, THE PEOPLE (22 photos from 09/17/2023)
- 2023_07_13B1_SIAH_Weatherbreak: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Reconstructing ‘Weatherbreak’ in an Age of Extreme Weather (17 photos from 07/13/2023)
- 2023_06_30D1_SIAH_Trouble: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Treasures and Trouble: Looking Inside a Legendary Blues Archive (42 photos from 06/30/2023)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Sense: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things (87 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Remembrance: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: War and Remembrance (8 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Rallying: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Rallying Against Racism (8 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Music_HerStory: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Music HerStory: Women and Music of Social Change (106 photos from 2022)
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Musical: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Musical Instruments (3 photos from 2022)
- ...More (List all 130 pages)...
Sort of Related Pages: Still more pages here that have content somewhat related to this one :
- 2022_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (11 photos from 2022)
- 2021_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (27 photos from 2021)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Everything)] [(Smithsonian) American History Museum (Non-Events)] [Museums (History)]
2022 photos: This year included major setbacks -- including Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the Supreme Court imposing the evangelical version of sharia law -- but also some steps forward like the results of the midterms. This website had its 20th anniversary in August, 2022. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: (February) a visit to see Dad and Dixie in Asheville, NC with some other members of my family, (July) a trip out west for the return of San Diego Comic-Con, and (October) a long weekend in New York to cover New York Comic-Con. Number of photos taken this year: about 386,000, up 2020 and 2021 levels but still way below pre-pandemic levels.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link: [Thumbnails Only]
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].