Smithsonian Associates Presents “Lidia Bastianich’s American Dream”

Smithsonian Associates presents an evening with Lidia Bastianich Wednesday, April 4, at 6:45 p.m. in the Rasmuson Theater at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In conversation with Washington Post food and dining editor, Joe Yonan, Bastianich will discuss her close-knit family, her professional ascent and her dedication and passion for food that led to multiple restaurants, many best-selling cookbooks and 20 years on public television as the host of her own cooking show.

Bastianich’s story begins with an upbringing in Pula, a formerly Italian city turned Yugoslavian under Tito’s communist regime. She enjoyed a childhood surrounded by love and security—despite the family’s poverty—and learned everything about Italian cooking from her beloved grandmother, Nonna Rosa. When the communist regime began investigating the family, they fled to Trieste, Italy, where they spent two years in a refugee camp waiting for visas to enter the United States, an experience that shaped Bastianich for the rest of her life. At 12, she started a new life in New York. She began working in restaurants as a young teenager, the first step in a food career that would make her name. Drawing on her new book, My American Dream (Knopf), Bastianich will share the vivid story of the fulfillment of that dream.

Ticket prices for the Smithsonian Associates’ presentation, which include a copy of My American Dream, are $55 for general admission and $45 for Smithsonian Associates’ members. For tickets and information, the public may call (202) 633-3030 or visit www.smithsonianassociates.org.

Smithsonian Associates—the largest museum-based education program in the world—produces vibrant educational and cultural programming inspired by the Smithsonian’s research, collections and exhibitions. Each year more than 750 individual programs are presented to spark creativity and excite learning in people of all ages in the Washington, D.C., area and across the country. Smithsonian Associates brings the Smithsonian to life through seminars, performances, lectures, studio arts classes and local and regional study tours, as well as many engaging programs for children, including performances and summer day camps.

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