Lizzie Conklin
On Friday, April 11, 2025, I met Julie Averbach at Book Trader to talk about another trader: Joe. Her debut publication, “The Art of Trader Joe’s,” traces the origins of the illustrations that adorn the aisles of the beloved supermarket, from the ancient Roman sculpture on Trader Joe’s Caesar Salad to the Art Nouveau icons on the store’s wine labels. The book drew from her award-winning senior History of Art thesis on Trader Joe’s as a contemporary cabinet of curiosities, a thesis advised by Professor Edward Cooke, who specializes in the study of decorative arts. With the help of her degree, Averbach fit her thesis into digestible bites, filling 201 pages with blurbs on Baloonomania, Peruvian textiles and unusual stacking arrangements. She designed and published the bound book herself. I transcribed our conversation below.
LC: Can you tell me about how your thesis developed?
JA: I was an Art History and Psychology double major, but while I was [at Yale], I just fell in love with the field of art history. It taught me the art of looking. Throughout all of my art history classes, I was exposed to so many different kinds of art, but I always gravitated towards visual culture and art as it’s interwoven into our daily lives. So, not necessarily like the art of the museum, but a more accessible kind of art that you encounter in your day to day life. I would often write about comic books, advertising, graphic design, or posters, to concentrate on more mass produced, accessible, kinds of art to apply a historical lens on.
When it came time to write my thesis, it was sort of a natural progression for me to think about a grocery store—because a grocery store is just about the most ordinary place that you can think of. But, Trader Joe’s infuses art into that environment to elevate the act of grocery shopping to something with more depth. There’s something exciting about looking at a box of cereal the same way that you would look at an oil painting in a museum.
I took a gap year between my junior and senior year at Yale. During that time I watched the documentary “Helvetica,” and I had a revelation where I became obsessed with the art of Trader Joe’s. As I watched that documentary about the history of typography, it opened my eyes to typography as an art form that surrounds us every day. After I watched it, I felt the urge to research Trader Joe’s because they used a lot of creative lettering and fonts on their packaging.
Once I went there, I started noticing art everywhere in the store—the whole place opened up as this treasure trove of art to me. I was looking at their Caesar salad, and I noticed the ancient Roman sculpture Augustus from Prima Porta on the label. As soon as I recognized that art historical reference, I realized that many of the images in the have their own backstories that they bring to Trader Joe’s, that have circulated through many contexts.
I came back to Yale for my senior year, and I took a class called “Collecting Nature” with Professor Paula Bertucci. It was a deep dive into the historical cabinet of curiosities, examining how they evolved from the 16th century through the 18th century. The conventional wisdom is that the cabinet of curiosities fell into a decline in the 18th century with the rise of the modern enlightened collecting museums, but I disagreed. Trader Joe’s is a modern cabinet of curiosities; the global nature of their selection and the curatorial logic behind the shelves seemed worthy of an art history thesis.
In the spring, I ended up writing a thesis comparing Trader Joe’s to a Renaissance cabinet of curiosities. Professor Cooke very kindly advised me, and I had the best time writing it. I really did. It was such a joy for me. I love the idea of Trader Joe’s as an accessible entry point into art history.
LC: I’m curious about when you adapted your thesis into a book that can introduce people to art history in an accessible way. How do you think about your audience? When you were assembling this book, did you think about who would read it? Or who would be flipping through it, with their family? How did you approach that?
JA: I think that I wanted this book to appeal to a really wide audience. There’s so much that I love about the field of art history, but how do we make art history feel less insular and exclusive? I wanted [“The Art of Trader Joe’s”] to appeal both the art lovers who shop at Trader Joe’s (but haven’t necessarily recognized the art history in this grocery store) and to the Trader Joe’s fans (people who feel really connected to the brand, and love the products, but might not consciously realize that there’s a whole other world of art in Trader Joe’s grocery stores). I wanted this book to speak to both audiences, but it was important for me to maintain the sophistication and intellectual rigor of my thesis, so a lot of the ideas in the book are from the original research.
I went to great lengths to make sure that all the information in the book is well researched and historically accurate. At the same time, I wanted to present the book in a way that was appealing and accessible, so I also divided the content into bite-sized pieces. so that someone could just pick up the book, flip to any page and start reading about a topic. You don’t have to read it cover to cover. I wanted to present it so you could jump in at any point. I wanted to give people lots of different ways to enter the book
LC: What did you do after college? What’s next? Do you want to get a PhD?
JA: Since graduating, I have been working in the arts and nonprofit spheres. During my pandemic gap year, I founded smARTee, which is a nonprofit that promotes virtual museum access for older adults. Initially, it was a passion project I dabbled in over my gap year. When I came back to Yale, I did a research study for my psychology thesis that measured the mental health impact of my virtual art museum tours on older adults. Through that study, we found some preliminary support that virtual tours generated positive mental health impact for older adults. Propelled by that momentum, I ended up pursuing Smarty postgrad through the Cohen public service fellowship, and that provided me the momentum to build and scale the nonprofit. Once that year was up, I turned Smarty into an official 501 c3 nonprofit. I’m still researching and curating virtual museum tours, and I’m looking for more groups to share these tours with. Honestly, when it comes to my long term career, I’m very open-minded. I would love to do something that has social impact that relates to the arts, but I’m open to a lot of different pathways.