Archives

As the first weekend of October inches closer, the St James Court Art Show prepares for its 68th year. A press conference will be held on Tuesday, September 10, 2024 at The Filson Historical Society at 10:00 a.m. where the 2024 St. James Court Art Show poster will be unveiled. This year, the St. James Court Art Show partnered with the Kentucky College of Art + Design (KyCAD) to produce the official poster for the 68th annual St. James Court Art Show. Students of KyCAD submitted their designs and the winning poster art will be announced at The Filson during the press conference. Guests will hear from the winning artist, as well as from the Executive Director of the St. James Court Art Show and from prominent Louisville public figures.

From bestselling author and longtime New York Times columnist Frank Bruni comes a lucid, powerful examination of the ways in which grievance has come to define our current culture and politics, on both the right and left.

The twists and turns of American politics are unpredictable, but the tone is a troubling given. It’s one of grievance. More and more Americans are convinced that they’re losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country’s most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb.

Grievance needn’t be bad. It has done enormous good. The United States is a nation born of grievance, and across the nearly two hundred and fifty years of our existence as a country, grievance has been the engine of morally urgent change. But what happens when all sorts of grievances—the greater ones, the lesser ones, the authentic, the invented—are jumbled together? When people take their grievances to lengths that they didn’t before? A violent mob storms the US Capitol, rejecting the results of a presidential election. Conspiracy theories flourish. Fox News knowingly peddles lies in the service of profit. College students chase away speakers, and college administrators dismiss instructors for dissenting from progressive orthodoxy. Benign words are branded hurtful; benign gestures are deemed hostile. And there’s a potentially devastating erosion of the civility, common ground, and compromise necessary for our democracy to survive.

How did we get here? What does it say about us, and where does it leave us? The Age of Grievance examines these critical questions and charts a path forward.

Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, in roles as diverse as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching in the school of public policy. He currently writes his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces additional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers.

Thank you to our sponsors: Dace Brown Stubbs, Marshall Farrer, Dace Polk Brown, Laura Lee Brown, Garvin Deters, Polk Deters, Laura Lee Gastis, Garvin Brown IV, and Campbell Brown.

Sponsored by Dinsmore and Shohl, LLP.

The Ohio River is one of America’s major transportation routes. During the frontier era it was one of the major routes for traders, surveyors, soldiers, and settlers to the First American West. What was travel like during that period? What were the advantages and disadvantages of traveling down the Beautiful River as the French dubbed it. The Ohio served as the first water leg of a journey that stretched across the continent to the Pacific for the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803 to 1806. It traveled its entire length from Pittsburgh to the Mississippi. What was journeying down the Ohio in 1803 like for this group of intrepid explorers heading down the river and into history? What occurred at the Falls of the Ohio that makes it one of the expedition’s major sites? Filson curator and Lewis and Clark historian Jim Holmberg will discuss early river travel and the Ohio’s expedition connection aboard the Belle of Louisville’s afternoon cruise on Friday, July 12.

Tickets must be purchased at belleoflouisville.org. Click on "Our River City" and choose the July 12 cruise. Filson members can use the promo code PARTNER to receive a 15% discount. Boarding begins at noon, cruse is from 1-3pm. Food and drink are available for purchase. Filson members and their guests have exclusive use of Captain’s Quarters on the Texas Deck.

This program is offered in partnership with the American Institute of Architects-Central Kentucky Chapter and the University of Kentucky College of Design.

Since 2018, the Filson Historical Society and the American Institute of Architects-Central Kentucky Chapter have partnered to provide architecture and design students with the opportunity to develop professional archiving skills and knowledge at one of the region’s premier historical research institutions. Past fellows have cataloged items from architects and firms including Jasper Ward, Nolan & Nolan, and Grossman Chapman Klarer, digitized select projects, and collaborated on a recent exhibit, Forgotten Foundations: Louisville’s Lost Architecture. Join Cherokee Henrie, our 2024 fellow, for a presentation exploring how adaptive reuse and historic preservation can work together harmoniously. Henrie will present her findings on the importance of maintaining historical integrity in adaptive reuse projects and propose strategies to bridge the current gaps in practice. For more information on the fellowship, please visit aia-ckc.org or the Filson’s architecture page: https://filsonhistorical.org/collections/architecture-collections.

Cherokee Henrie recently graduated from the University of Louisville, where she obtained her B.F.A. in Interior Design. She will continue her studies at the University of Louisville in the Fall, pursuing a Master of Urban Planning with a concentration in community development. With a passion for historic preservation, she has focused her research on the adaptive reuse of historic structures.