Filson+MESDA
New Voices in Kentucky Material Culture
October 13-14, 2023
The Filson and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts partnered to open new conversations about material culture in the colonial and early-national Ohio Valley. Whose perspectives on the past have been ignored? Which stories have gone untold? Whose work has been un-examined and underappreciated? Who can tell us a new, relevant story now?
This two-day conference featured panels exploring Black, Indigenous, female, and queer perspectives on the confluence of rivers and cultures in the 18th and 19th century. It was intended to spark new ideas by bringing together academics, curators, collectors, and practicing artists.
Conference Schedule
Friday October 13, 2023
4:00 – 5:30 – Video Recording Here
Mairin Odle, University of Alabama, “Coats of Arms and Cruelties: Indigenous Tattoos on Colonial Bodies”
Casey Price, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, “Mapping Cherokee Foreign Policy: John Stuart’s’ Map of the area between Fort Loudon, Tennessee, and Kaskaskia, Illinois”
6:00 – 7:00 Keynote – Video Recording Here
Kariann Akemi Yokota, University of Colorado-Denver, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America became a Postcolonial Nation”
Saturday October 14, 2023
9:00 – 10:30 – Video Recording Here
Lea Lane, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, “After You: A Copy of The Emigration of Daniel Boone and the Development of Kentucky’s Visual Mythology“
Mark Alan Mattes, University of Louisville, “Trees and Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, and the Logan Elm”
11:00 – 12:30 – Video Recording Here
Neal Hurst, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, “‘Half horse – half alligator and tipped with the snapping turtle:’ Clothing the early Kentuckian”
Robert P. Murray, Mercy University, “Hemp: Everywhere & Nowhere”
2:00 – 4:00 – Video Recording Here
Ben Bascom, Ball State University, “How (Not) to Leave a Legacy in the Early Republic: John Fitch, ‘Lord’ Timothy Dexter, and the Lessons of John Filson”
Philippe Halbert, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Leading the Way: The 1749 Lead Plate Expedition and French Dreams of Empire in the Ohio Valley
