Filson AddEvents

The Filson is thrilled to partner with the Louisville Orchestra and Louisville Ballet to showcase previews of Appalachian Spring featuring performing artists from both organizations. This multi-dimensional and immersive program will bring performance, art, and history to life with experts discussing the important role the arts have and continue to play in international politics. Join us as Dr. Victoria Phillips, Martin Lofsnes, Anthony Krutzkamp, and Teddy Abrams provide an in-depth chat on Cold War artistic expression and the resulting dynamics.

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Sponsored by the Kentucky College of Art + Design

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Dick Sisto on piano and vibraphone with special guests, Aaron Boaz, Jeremy Allen, and Art Gore. Join us for an afternoon of music celebrating the arrival of spring with the great American songbook. Selections will include, Spring is Here, It Might as Well Be Spring, Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most. All written by the Greatest Composers of the jazz era.

Join the Filson Historical Society for a special book chat with Kim Michele Richardson. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek comes a triumphant tale of a librarian’s fight to bring literacy to the prisons of Kentucky and the underserved neighborhoods surrounding downtown Louisville, revealing a story of fierce love, quiet strength, and the healing power of books. 

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Doors will open at 5:15 pm for book signing with the program following at 6:00 pm. The price of admission includes a copy of her new book, The Mountains We Call Home, The Book Woman’s Legacy.

This program is produced in partnership with Farmington Historic Home.

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In conjunction with the annual Farmington Plant Sale, the Filson will co-host an educational and experiential session with experts on how incorporating native plants into your home garden and landscape provides multiple benefits. A scholar-led discussion of the ecology of Kentucky in the early statehood era will help attendees understand more about the importance of native plants to our landscape and environment. This hands-on session led by Farmington Master Gardeners will provide attendees with all the necessary tips, recommendations, and resources to elevate their gardening and landscape to action.

Please note: there are two sessions for this event.
Session 1 – 10:00-11:00 a.m. (30 participants maximum)
Session 2 – Noon-1:00 p.m. (30 participants maximum)

The 2026 Annual Lecture on Asian Democracy is co-sponsored with the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville and presented by the University of Louisville’s Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute in collaboration with the Filson Historical Society.

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Autocrats across Asia are using both old tricks and new technologies to tighten their grips on power, while societies including Bangladesh and Nepal have experienced popular uprisings that demanded democracy and fundamental change. As these battles play out, the roles taken by youth and technology have moved to the forefront, while the dynamics of Russia and China moving into spaces ceded by the United States have had momentous impacts on democratic trajectories in countries all over Asia.

What are democracy’s prospects in Asia, as autocrats advance and populations seek to reverse those tides?  What are the impacts of cuts to democracy assistance by the United States and other key donors reducing and reprioritizing their aid budgets?  Most importantly, how can pro-democracy forces in Asia and their supporters and allies around the world, counter authoritarianism and build momentum amid so many challenges and threats?

Anthony “Tony” Banbury joined the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) as President and Chief Executive Officer on November 1, 2018. Prior to joining IFES, Banbury worked for the UN for 20 years in a variety of roles both at UN headquarters in New York and in the field.

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In the summer of 1954, educator Septima Clark and small businessman Esau Jenkins travelled to rural Tennessee’s Highlander Folk School, an interracial training center for social change founded by Myles Horton, a white southerner with roots in the labor movement. There, the trio united behind a shared mission: preparing Black southerners to pass the daunting Jim Crow era voter registration literacy tests that were designed to disenfranchise them.

Together with beautician-turned-teacher Bernice Robinson, they launched the underground Citizenship Schools project, which began with a single makeshift classroom hidden in the back of a rural grocery store. By the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law in 1965, the secretive undertaking had established more than nine hundred citizenship schools across the South, preparing tens of thousands of Black citizens to read and write, demand their rights—and vote. Simultaneously, it nurtured a generation of activists—many of them women—trained in community organizing, political citizenship, and tactics of resistance and struggle who became the grassroots foundation of the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. King called Septima Clark, “Mother of the Movement.”

In the vein of Hidden Figures and Devil in the Grove, Spell Freedom is both a riveting, crucially important lens onto our past, and a deeply moving story for our present.

Elaine Weiss is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. In addition to Spell Freedom, she is the author of Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army of the Great War; and The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote.