Upcoming Events

Upcoming Events

Please see below for details and descriptions of upcoming events at the Filson.  All event times are in EST or EDT depending on the season.  Click here to register and pay for programs, tickets are required. Filson members will need to log in to access the member pricing for events.  Many of our past events can be viewed on the Filson YouTube Channel.  If you have any issues with registering via our ticketing solution please call (502) 635-5083.

Recent Filson events have regularly been reaching our capacity limits.  If members or non-members wish to attend an event please register beforehand.  We cannot guarantee a space for walk ups on the day of the lecture.  

Dine & Dialogue – The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II

Date: March 21, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person and Zoom Options)
Book Cover: The Soldier's Truth by David Chrisinger

Sponsored by Dinsmore & Shohl, LLP.

A beautiful reckoning with the life and work of the legendary journalist Ernie Pyle, who gave World War II a human face for millions of Americans even as he wrestled with his own demons.

At the height of his fame and influence during World War II, Ernie Pyle’s nationally syndicated dispatches from combat zones shaped America’s understanding of what the war felt like to ordinary soldiers, as no writer’s work had before or has since. From North Africa to Sicily, from the beaches of Anzio to the beaches of Normandy, and on to the war in the Pacific, where he would meet his end, Ernie Pyle had a genius for connecting with his beloved dogfaced grunts. A humble man, himself plagued by melancholy and tortured by marriage to a partner whose mental health struggles were much more acute than his own, Pyle was in touch with suffering in a way that left an indelible mark on his readers. While never defeatist, his stories left no doubt as to the heavy weight of the burden soldiers carried. He wrote about post-traumatic stress long before that was a diagnosis.

In The Soldier’s Truth, acclaimed writer David Chrisinger brings Pyle’s journey to vivid life in all its heroism and pathos. Drawing on access to all of Pyle’s personal correspondence, his book captures every dramatic turn of Pyle’s war with sensory immediacy and a powerful feel for both the outer and the inner landscape. With a background in helping veterans and other survivors of trauma come to terms with their experiences through storytelling, Chrisinger brings enormous reservoirs of empathy and insight to bear on Pyle’s trials. Woven in and out of his chronicle is the golden thread of his own travels across these same landscapes, many of them still battle-scarred, searching for the landmarks Pyle wrote about.

A moving tribute to an ordinary American hero whose impact on the war is still too little understood, and a powerful account of that war’s impact and how it is remembered, The Soldier’s Truth takes its place among the essential contributions to our perception of war and how we make sense of it.

David Chrisinger is the executive director of the Public Policy Writing Workshop at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and the director of writing seminars for The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit newsroom dedicated to reporting on the human impact of military service. He is the author of several books, including Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor’s Guide to Writing about Trauma, and the recipient of the 2022 National Council of Teachers of English George Orwell Award.

For those who purchase a Lecture and Dinner ticket, a three-course prix fixe meal at Buck’s restaurant will follow the lecture.

An Introduction to Black Studies

Date: March 26, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Reception at 5pm, Lecture begins at 6pm, at the Filson Historical Society (In-Person and Zoom Options)
Book Cover: An Introduction to Black Studies by Eric R. Jackson.

Sponsored by The Association for Teaching Black History in Kentucky.

Reception begins at 5:00 pm, with the discussion beginning at 6:00 pm.

For hundreds of years, the American public education system has neglected to fully examine, discuss, and acknowledge the vast and rich history of people of African descent who have played a pivotal role in the transformation of the United States. The establishment of Black studies departments and programs represented a major victory for higher education and a vindication of Black scholars such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Nathan Huggins. This emerging field of study sought to address omissions from numerous disciplines and correct the myriad distortions, stereotypes, and myths about persons of African descent.

In An Introduction to Black Studies, Eric R. Jackson demonstrates the continuing need for Black studies, also known as African American studies, in university curricula. Jackson connects the growth and impact of Black studies to the broader context of social justice movements, emphasizing the historical and contemporary demand for the discipline. This book features seventeen chapters that focus on the primary eight disciplines of Black studies: history, sociology, psychology, religion, feminism, education, political science, and the arts. Each chapter includes a biographical vignette of an important figure in African American history, such as Frederick Douglass, Louis Armstrong, and Madam C. J. Walker, as well as student learning objectives that provide a starting point for educators. This valuable work speaks to the strength and rigor of scholarship on Blacks and African Americans, its importance to the formal educational process, and its relevance to the United States and the world.

Eric R. Jackson is professor of history and associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Northern Kentucky University. The former director of the Black Studies program at NKU, he has published reviews and articles in a number of journals, including the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Negro Education, International Journal on World Peace, and Journal of Pan African Studies. He is coauthor of Cincinnati’s Underground Railroad and Unique Challenges in Urban Schools: The Involvement of African American Parents.

Lafayette and the Farewell Tour: Odyssey of an American Icon

Date: April 4, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person and Zoom Options)
Book Cover: Lafayette in America translated by Alan R. Hoffman.

This program is offered in partnership with The American Friends of Lafayette.

General Lafayette, born the Marquis de Lafayette in Auvergne, France, was truly an American idol in the 19th century. The proof is that 80 counties, cities, and towns were named after him as well as streets and roads everywhere. In this program, the translator of Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, a first-hand account of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America, will describe the full extent of his reputation and explore its origins. Lafayette’s extraordinary reputation was based on his military record in the Revolution, his friendship with Washington, his continued support of American interests, his story-book life and, perhaps most importantly, his Farewell Tour of America when he visited all 24 states and Washington City as the last surviving major general of the Continental Army. Lafayette’s visits to places associated with the venue of the talk are discussed to illustrate the grand reception that the American people gave him on his Farewell Tour.

Alan R. Hoffman obtained his BA in history from Yale where he studied under Professor Edmund Morgan, before earning a JD at Harvard Law School. He practiced law in Boston for 50 years. An avid reader of early American history, he “discovered” Lafayette in 2002 and spent two years – 2003 to 2005 – translating Auguste Levasseur’s Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825, the first-hand account of Lafayette’s Farewell Tour of America written by his private secretary. This translation was published in 2006 and is in its third printing.

Jazz at the Filson

Date: April 7, 2024
Time: 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person Only)
Mike Hyman playing drums.

Cost: $30 for members; $35 for non-members.

Join us Sunday, April 7 for a reunion concert with the Louisville Jazz Quartet All Stars! Created in the 90s by vibraphonist Dick Sisto, the Quartet played together at numerous jazz venues and were supported by enthusiastic jazz lovers. The group, featuring Tim Whalen on tenor sax, Tyrone Wheeler on bass, and Mike Hyman on drums, has not performed together in recent years and have played with noted jazz musicians such as David Sanborn, Richard Groove Holmes, Gary Burton, Fred Hersch, Stan Getz, David ‘Fathead’ Newman, Jimmy Rainey, Jack Macduff, and Joe Morello.

The reunion concert will feature the Great Standards and Jazz Standards from Falling in Love, the recent Steeplechase release of Dick Sisto. The repertoire will be a Jazz Feast and is not to be missed. Tickets for this event include light refreshments.

The Gertrude Polk Brown Lecture Series – Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II

Date: April 10, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: The Kentucky Center - Bomhard Theater, 501 W. Main St., Louisville
Book Cover for Road to Surrender

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. Members – Use code FILSON for complimentary tickets.

At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war “at once.” Stimson is waiting for him. He wants to know: has Groves selected the targets yet?

So begins this suspenseful, impeccably researched history that draws on new access to diaries to tell the story of three men who were intimately involved with America’s decision to drop the atomic bomb—and Japan’s decision to surrender. They are Henry Stimson, the American Secretary of War, who had overall responsibility for decisions about the atom bomb; Gen. Carl “Tooey” Spaatz, head of strategic bombing in the Pacific, who supervised the planes that dropped the bombs; and Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, the only one in Emperor Hirohito’s Supreme War Council who believed even before the bombs were dropped that Japan should surrender.

Henry Stimson had served in the administrations of five presidents, but as the U.S. nuclear program progressed, he found himself tasked with the unimaginable decision of determining whether to deploy the bomb. The new president, Harry S. Truman, thus far a peripheral figure in the momentous decision, accepted Stimson’s recommendation to drop the bomb. Army Air Force Commander Gen. Spaatz ordered the planes to take off. Like Stimson, Spaatz agonized over the command even as he recognized it would end the war. After the bombs were dropped, Foreign Minister Togo was finally able to convince the emperor to surrender.

To bring these critical events to vivid life, bestselling author Evan Thomas draws on the diaries of Stimson, Togo and Spaatz, contemplating the immense weight of their historic decision. In Road to Surrender, an immersive, surprising, moving account, Thomas lays out the behind-the-scenes thoughts, feelings, motivations, and decision-making of three people who changed history.

Evan Thomas is the author of nine books: The Wise Men (with Walter Isaacson), The Man to See, The Very Best Men, Robert Kennedy, John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, The War Lovers, Ike’s Bluff, and Being NixonJohn Paul Jones and Sea of Thunder were New York Times bestsellers. Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for thirty-three years at Time and Newsweek, including ten years (1986–96) as Washington bureau chief at Newsweek, where, at the time of his retirement in 2010, he was editor at large. He wrote more than one hundred cover stories and in 1999 won a National Magazine Award. He wrote Newsweek’s fifty-thousand-word election specials in 1996, 2000, 2004 (winner of a National Magazine Award), and 2008. He has appeared on many TV and radio talk shows, including Meet the Press and The Colbert Report, and has been a guest on PBS’s Charlie Rose more than forty times. The author of dozens of book reviews for The New York Times and The Washington Post, Thomas has taught writing and journalism at Harvard and Princeton, where, from 2007 to 2014, he was Ferris Professor of Journalism.

Oscie Thomas met her husband Evan at the University of Virginia law school, where they were classmates. In 1977, she joined Donovan Leisure, a litigation firm, in New York and Washington DC, before moving to AT&T, retiring as a Federal Government Affairs Vice President in 2000. Since then she has worked with Evan on his books as an editor and researcher.

Lonnie & Twyla Money: 50 Years of Kentucky Appalachian Folk Art

Date: April 16, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person and Zoom Options)
Book cover of Lonnie & Twyla Money.

Lonnie & Twyla Money: 50 Years of Kentucky Appalachian Folk Art is the story of two iconic Kentucky artists who have not only been making highly regarded folk art pieces for nearly 50 years, but who have helped to shape this unique Appalachian art form.

Karen Abney grew up in the Ohio River Valley and has since traveled extensively, led by a natural curiosity and desire to seek out beautiful things. Kentucky has been her adopted home for nearly 40 years—familiar because of her Appalachian heritage, and enjoyed for its natural beauty.

Karen has been a designer since creating her first logo at age eight. An early love of letters led her to a career in Graphic Design, which evolved into work in Marketing, Environmental Graphic Design, Wayfinding and Signage Design, and Digital User Experience Design. She has won numerous awards for her work in each category.

An accomplished painter, fiber artist, and photographer, she has exhibited at several galleries across the region. She enjoys spending time hiking, kayaking, and traveling with her sons, Kyle and Alex Huninghake.

Bus Tour: Northwest & Indigenous Revolution Tour

Start date: April 18, 2024
End date: April 20, 2024
All-day event
Location: Bus Tour (In-person only event)
Poster for the Filson Bus Tour of Northwest and Indigenous Revolution.

When George Rogers Clark struck north from the Falls of the Ohio in 1778, he plunged head-first into a century of Native and European diplomacy, trade, exchange, and settlement. Touring the intersection of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys, we connect Kentucky to ancient Cahokia, Parisian palaces, Great Plains fur camps, and Havana barrios. At no time until the present was our region as linguistically, spiritually, and culturally diverse as it was on the eve of American Independence. Visit colonial Ft. de Chartres, Ste. Genevieve, St. Charles, Cahokia, and Vincennes and meet local experts, architectural historians, artisans, and curators who keep the memory of this global crossroads alive.

The price of the trip includes transportation, admission to all museums and historical sites, two dinners with guest speakers, and two lunches. Participants are responsible for covering the costs of overnight accommodations at special group rate hotels and one lunch (totaling approximately $300). The tour will be visiting sites that require lots of walking and some stairs, please take this under consideration before purchasing tickets.

An Evening with Rick Bass: “With Every Great Breath – New and Selected Essays, 1995-2023”

Date: April 18, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Reception at 5pm, Lecture begins at 6pm at Filson Historical Society (In-Person Only)
Image of Rick Bass.

This lecture is made possible by the generous support of Nana Lampton and presented in collaboration with the Filson Historical Society.

A reception will be held before the lecture beginning at 5 PM.  The lecture will start at 6 PM.

For acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, fragmented, the dead and the dying, and the doomed-to-extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us.

Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription, and to inhabit, as deeply as possible, the greater depths of beauty in-the-moment. With Every Great Breath ranges from the extremely local—a long-form essay about the community affected by the largest Superfund site in U.S. history, in Libby, Montana—to the far-flung: the Galapagos, Namibia, and Alaska. Throughout, Bass offers a portrait of our planet that is always alert to its wonders, even in the face of environmental crisis.

Rick Bass is the author of more than thirty books. He is a winner of the Story Prize, the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, a PEN/Nelson Algren Award Special Citation for fiction, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Under the Greenwood Tree: A Celebration of Kentucky Shakespeare

Date: April 25, 2024
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person Only)
Book cover of under the greenwood tree. Dark blue background with tree branches and leaves in the foreground.

This program is associated with the exhibit, Kentucky Progress: Establishing the Kentucky State Parks, which will be open for 50 minutes prior to the program.

In the summer of 1960, director C. Douglas Ramey took his Carriage House Players theater company down the street from their Old Louisville venue to Central Park, where the actors performed scenes from the Shakespeare classic Much Ado about Nothing. Buoyed by the enthusiastic audience response, Ramey’s company returned to the park the next year for the first full season of the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. More than sixty years later, Kentucky Shakespeare is now the oldest free, non-ticketed Shakespeare in the Park festival in the country. To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the festival, in spring 2020 Kentucky Shakespeare cooperated with students in the University of Louisville’s Department of History to record twenty entertaining and enlightening oral interviews with longtime members of the company. In Under the Greenwood Tree, author Tracy K’Meyer captures the history of Kentucky Shakespeare in a series of carefully selected and edited transcripts of these interviews. In these pages, past and present cast and crew share their memories of the company’s history, performances in the park, and the positive impact of its many outreach programs, from its inception in the 1960s, to its slump in the early 2000s, and on to its recent renaissance. An illuminating record of the collaborative artistry that brings Shakespeare’s works to life, Under the Greenwood Tree offers readers a peek behind the curtain at the group’s steadfast stewardship of the most important literature in the English language.

Tracy K’Meyer is professor of US history at the University of Louisville, where she has served as codirector of the Oral History Center. She is the author of “To Live Peaceably Together”: The American Friends Service Committee’s Campaign for Open Housing and Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky 1945–1980.

The Kentucky Oaks: 150 Years of Running for the Lilies

Date: April 30, 2024
Time: 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Location: Filson Historical Society (In-Person and Zoom Options)
Book cover the Kentucky Oaks 150 years of racing for the Lillies by Avalyn Hunter.

No Thoroughbred race in the state of Kentucky holds a more hallowed place in the national and international consciousness than the Kentucky Derby. Its fame is richly deserved, yet there are other equally important and historic races whose significance deserves a larger share of the spotlight—none more so than the Derby’s sister race, the Kentucky Oaks.

Inaugurated on May 19, 1875—just two days after the first Kentucky Derby—and run annually at Churchill Downs since then, the Kentucky Oaks is America’s most prestigious race for three-year-old fillies and the second-oldest continuously run horse race in North America. Always cherished by horsemen as a test for the future mothers of the Thoroughbred, the Oaks has in recent years become a major charity and fashion gala in addition to its significance as a sporting event. Yet, although multiple books have been published about the Kentucky Derby, popular and academic historians alike have largely overlooked the Oaks.

In The Kentucky Oaks: 150 Years of Running for the Lilies, author Avalyn Hunter sets out to recover the history of one of the most watched and highly attended events in Thoroughbred racing. Beginning with Meriweather Lewis Clark Jr.’s creation of a race designed to parallel England’s historic Oaks Stakes, Hunter traces the evolution of the Kentucky Oaks through the stories of the men, women, and fillies that have made the Kentucky Oaks a symbol for women’s growing participation in the sport at all levels.

Avalyn Hunter is a nationally recognized authority on Thoroughbred pedigrees and racing history whose work has appeared in the Blood-Horse, Thoroughbred Times, Owner-Breeder International, MarketWatch, New York Breeder, and Louisiana Horse. She is the author of Dream Derby: The Myth and Legend of Black Gold, American Classic Pedigrees 1914–2002, The Kingmaker: How Northern Dancer Founded a Racing Dynasty, and Gold Rush: How Mr. Prospector Became Racing’s Billion-Dollar Sire.