Since 2017, the mission of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has been to document and collect the history of American beer, with an emphasis on the histories of microbrewed and craft beer. That mission was never clearer than when the news broke in mid-July 2023 of the impending liquidation of Anchor Brewing Co., the nation’s first microbrewer.

Join Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative, for a deep dive into her emergency collecting trip to Anchor Brewing Company days before the business’s liquidation. The artifacts, business records, and oral histories gathered there will serve researchers, curators, and the public long into the future.

Theresa McCulla is a curator and historian of the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States. Her scholarship investigates how Americans have used material and visual culture to understand race, ethnicity, and gender, especially in the realm of food and drink. Her first book, Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024.

McCulla is the Curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. She earned a PhD in American Studies and an MA in History from Harvard University; a Culinary Arts Diploma from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts; and a BA in Romance Languages from Harvard College. Previously, she worked as an Arcadia Fellow for the Colonial North American Project at Harvard Library; managed the Food Literacy Project for Harvard University Dining Services; cooked in sweet and savory restaurant kitchens in Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC; and worked as a European media analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. Her writing has been awarded by the James Beard Foundation and the North American Guild of Beer Writers.