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Sponsored by Dinsmore and Shohl, LLP.

The in-person portion of this event is sold out.  There is still the option to watch the lecture virtually.

Many in Louisville say they have always wondered about Architect James Gaffney’s house on River Road, and what the house might look like on the inside. After remaining unoccupied since 1979, the Gaffney House underwent a total renovation from 2020 to 2023, with the goals of retaining and restoring the immense character of the home while making updates to its structure, mechanical systems, kitchen, and bathrooms. Architects Adriane Riesser and Kathryn Curtis from WorK Architecture + Design will present photos of the house throughout the renovation process, as well as discuss the technical updates that make the house modern and comfortable. They will also share historical photos of the interior and review how decisions were made to harmonize new tile, paint, and light fixtures to the original style of the home. WorK Architecture + Design worked in collaboration with owner Dr. Galen Weiss and Wilkinson Builders to renovate and modernize the historic Gaffney House.

Established in 2012, WorK Architecture + Design is a Louisville-based firm offering Architectural and Interior Design services on a variety of project types and scopes ranging from hospitality, housing, preservation, and adaptive reuse. At the heart of the business, WorK’s people are driven by passion to enhance the art and craft of Architecture, with a focus on elevating clients, neighborhoods, and cities. Adriane Riesser, AIA, and Kathryn Curtis, Associate AIA, are both Louisville natives and thrilled to have been involved with the Gaffney House renovation.

Sponsored by Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP.

In graduate school, Rachel Martin was sent to a small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to attempt court mandated desegregation.

But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, “Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it.”

For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn’t want remembered. So, she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk—including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High—to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The National Guard rushed to town, along with national journalists like Edward R. Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn’t the most explosive secret Martin learned...

In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in an intimate, kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a turbulent turning point for America. The result is at once a “gripping” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) mystery and a moving piece of forgotten civil rights history, rendered “with precision, lucidity and, most of all, a heart inured to false hope” (The New York Times).

You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee—but you won’t be forgetting the town anytime soon.

Rachel Louise Martin, PhD, is a historian and writer whose work has appeared in The Atlantic and Oxford American, among other publications. The author of Hot, Hot Chicken, a cultural history of Nashville hot chicken, and A Most Tolerant Little Town, the forgotten story of the first school to attempt court-mandated desegregation in the wake of Brown v. Board, she is especially interested by the politics of memory and the power of stories to illuminate why injustice persists in America today.

As the thirteen colonies struggled for independence and wrestled with concepts of republican government, the times made many men. Those beyond the mountains, in the burgeoning American west, faced additional challenges as they strove to secure their place in the new nation. From this crucible emerged John Brown, a man whose natural reserve belied a deep and abiding devotion to his country and its citizens.

With a keen analysis of the major issues and personalities of the time, deftly illuminated with vivid details, Steven Walker has created, in this handsome volume, a fully-realized portrait of this extraordinary man and the new state and nation he dedicated his life to building.

It is surprising that this volume should be the first full biography of a man who did so much to shape the development of the new American west immediately following the Revolutionary War. John Brown became the first senator for the district of Kentucky some nine years before statehood, when Kentuckians made him their first choice for the US Senate, a body which twice appointed him president pro tempore; yet today he is largely unknown.

Whether dealing with the physical threat from Indians, local personal political opposition, rival inter-state motivations, or the influences of British, French, or Spanish agents, John Brown fought for the interests of his fellow Kentuckians. In due course, this founding father of Kentucky became embroiled in controversies over the Spanish and Burr conspiracies, but throughout, he retained the confidence and respect of his friends, including the founding fathers and early presidents of the United States.

From piloting fighter jets to commanding operations, Steven Walker led a career in defense and government while also pursuing a varied academic path. Along the way he gained degrees in archaeology and ancient history, management and research, defense and strategic studies, and cultural heritage. His PhD is in settler colonial history.

One result of his love of heritage and the built environment is the antebellum home, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, he now shares with his wife Lynn in Perryville, Kentucky.

His previous work, the economic history Enterprise, Risk and Ruin: The Stage-coach and the Development of Van Diemen's Land and Tasmania, was in part a result of his restoration of a c. 1833 Georgian sandstone coaching inn.

Join us at the Filson for a conversation with Lonnie Ali, hosted by Filson President and CEO Richard Clay. Lonnie is a wife, mother, philanthropist, and Parkinson's advocate, dedicated to preserving the enduring legacy of her husband, the legendary Muhammad Ali. Join us as she discusses life, love, and Ali.

Inspiring humanitarian, Parkinson’s research and awareness advocate, children’s education defender, and soul mate to Muhammad Ali; Lonnie Ali is also a proud mother and stepmother. Her husband, The Greatest of All Time, Muhammad Ali passed away in June of 2016. Lonnie eloquently captured Muhammad’s life and dreams in an inspiring eulogy just days after his passing at his Memorial Service, viewed by one billion people worldwide. Lonnie currently serves as the Chairwoman of the ALI IN ALL OF US Initiative. ALI IN ALL OF US is an initiative honoring the awe-inspiring life of Muhammad Ali, encouraging others to inspire the world; one person at a time engaging in service to others and creating an awareness of service that extends to people’s daily life and interactions with others.

Presented by the University of Louisville’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute in collaboration with the Filson Historical Society.

This lecture will focus on dramatic changes since the end of the Cold War, rise of China and Russian aggression against her neighbors.

The Iron Curtain, that Communist Soviet Union had built in Europe, crumbled within weeks in 1989. Western Allies have extended "hand of friendship” over the ruins of the Berlin Wall, while welcoming nations in the world of democracy. For three decades we were building a new type of relationship based on respect to international law, sovereignty, and individual pursuit of happiness. Part of this new relationship was understanding that international security is not a zero-sum-game but a collaborative effort where all sides are winning. On 9/11 we had to adapt to the fact that not everybody shared the same vision of good a tolerance, while powerful non-state actors became a crucial terrorist threat. In Russia, revisionist psychology, lack of post-imperial reckoning and slow clampdown on freedom, including freedom of press, started to turn the tables. Ultimately, Moscow decided to enter Georgia in 2008, invade and illegally annex Crimea in 2014 and launch a full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. On the global scene, China pursued vigorously her own interests, including through control of critical minerals, advanced technologies, and malign handling of social media. Rules of globally intertwined economy and international legal order, as defined since World War II, are challenged. The future of "doing business globally” is uncertain, isolationists provide easy, but dangerous solutions to protest the way of life. To understand the trends and keep up with speed of information – views from most trusted Allies are important for leading through the muddy waters of divided nations, regions and averting the bad scenarios.

Radovan Javorcík has most recently served as Slovak Ambassador to the United States since January 2021. Prior to his current role he served as Slovak Ambassador and Permanent Representative to NATO from April 1, 2017 to December 2020.

Previously, he served as Chief of Staff of the First Deputy Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic (2011-2015) and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Israel (2015-2017). He also served as Deputy Head of Mission and chargé d’affaires ad interim of the Slovak Republic in the United Kingdom (2005-2009). He held various senior positions at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic. In 2010-2011 he was Director of Security Policy Department, in 2009-2010 Director of North America, Middle East and Australia Department, and in 1997-1998 he was Deputy Director of the Policy Planning Department. After his posting at the Slovak Permanent Mission to NATO (1998-2002), he continued to work on NATO files. He was part of a team preparing Slovakia’s accession to NATO, mainly in capacity of the Head of PRENAME (Preparation for NATO Membership Programme).

Before joining the Slovak Foreign Service in 1995, he worked at the Office of the President of the Slovak Republic in the Press Department and later Foreign Policy Department.

He graduated from the Slovak Technical University (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering) in 1993 and Institute of International Relations at the Comenius University (Faculty of Law) in Bratislava in 1995. He speaks fluent English, Czech, and Russian as well as basic French, German and Spanish.