California Humanities A State of Open Mind
Join us as we take a closer look at the connection between the humanities and California’s rich food traditions. We will be featuring Nikiko Masumoto of Masumoto Family Farm, and highlighting some of our past grantees whose work nourishes the people of California. The evening’s program will include remarks from California Foodways‘ Lisa Morehouse and from Steven Wong of LA Heat. Chef Reem Assil, of Reem’s Catering will be providing traditional Arab street food made with California love.
Join us for this special fundraising event supporting California Humanities.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
6–8 pm
One Kearny Club
San Francisco, California
Tickets are $100 ($50 tax deductible) and
support California Humanities’ work throughout the state.
About the featured guests:
Nikiko Masumoto (she/her) can be described as an organic farmer, memory keeper, community worker, and artist. She is a fourth generation farmer in California where she grows organic nectarines, apricots, peaches and grapes for raisins with her family (Masumoto Family Farm). Her work with in agriculture is often her springboard to working in place, storytelling, and community. You might find her on a stage, performing her one-woman show about Japanese American memory or speaking at a gathering about equity, story, and connection to food and the land. You could find Masumoto in community meetings, planning and designing intergenerational programming or with rural artists and creative placemakers imagining what resilient futures could be. Nikiko has co-authored two books: a cookbook called The Perfect Peach and Changing Season. She is the co-founder and co-director of Yonsei Memory Project, a movement to give power and life to Japanese American memory keeping. Masumoto serves on the board of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Western States Arts Federation, and Art of the Rural.
Lisa Morehouse is an award-winning public radio reporter and editor focusing on food, agriculture, and the people who make both possible. She produces California Foodways, a county-by-county exploration of stories at the intersection of food, culture, history, economics, labor and the environment. The stories air on KQED’s The California Report Magazine, and national shows like All Things Considered, The World, and Here and Now. The series received a national Edward R. Murrow Award and two James Beard nominations. An editor at KALW’s Crosscurrents, Morehouse also teaches audio production to high school and college students.
Steven Wong is a curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park. Previously he was the Interim Executive Director and the senior staff curator at the Chinese American Museum where he developed and implemented both contemporary art and history exhibitions. As part of the Getty’s 2017 Pacific Standard Time LA/LA, he conceived of and co-curated an exhibition examining the historic circuits of migrations, cross-connections, and flows of artists and Chinese diasporic communities influenced artistic production within the larger development of Caribbean art. In 2014, Wong curated LA Heat: Taste Changing Condiments, an exhibit that brought together over 30 LA-based artists from disparate art worlds to explore the sociocultural plurality and hybridity of LA via the city’s culinary innovation. Wong is also a visual art and has exhibited in museums and galleries in LA and New York.
Reem Assil founded Reem’s with a passion for the flavors of Arab street-corner bakeries and the vibrant communities where they’re located. Growing up in a Palestinian-Syrian household, Assil was surrounded by the aromas and tastes of food from the homeland and the connections they evoked of her heritage, family, and community. Before dedicating herself to a culinary career, Assil worked for a decade as a community and labor organizer, and brings the warmth of community to all her events. She was a 2018 James Beard Semi-Finalist for Best Chef West, San Francisco Magazine’s 2018 Chef of the Year and San Francisco Chronicle’s 2017 Rising Star Chef.
