I come to you on this Monday morning with high hopes that your 2023 is off to a splendid start. In the oft’ cold and even more often gray days of January, a sunny outlook is sometimes the best way forward.

If you are a college student, the parent of a college student, or just someone who loves a college student, we have some news that may make your outlook a bit brighter.

The Frazier is offering free membership to all college students attending class in Kentucky and Indiana! “Why?” you may ask. Well, when we polled our current membership base, the common thread was not zip code, demographics, race, religion, or income. Rather, our folks value education.

College students are big on curiosity and low on cash, so we thought we’d do them a solid. If you’re enrolled as a student at a college or university in either Kentucky or Indiana, and you have a planned graduation date, you’re eligible to sign up here.

Our mission at the Frazier is to ignite the human spirit, and what better timber than life-long learners.

In today’s Frazier Weekly, you will hear from both a college student and a college professor about our new initiative. You’ll also learn from our Haley Hicky about the latest Bourbon Limited Club shipment. With only 500 bottles, this is a chance to get an instant Wilderness Trail unicorn on your top shelf.

Collections manager Tish Boyer takes us through cleaning 30,000 toy soldiers, Rachel Platt recaps a special day for the Black Six, and Stephen Yates suggests a way to beat the winter doldrums.

I hope you enjoy.

Andy Treinen
President & CEO
Frazier History Museum

This Week in the Museum

College Student Nicole Clay on Benefits of Frazier Membership

I’ve been visiting the Frazier since I was a kid and it’s part of the reason I chose to pursue a degree in history as an undergrad. Once I hit high school, I kind of knew I wanted to work in a museum—so any time I traveled, I tried to check out the local museums.

During my time at Northern Kentucky University, I struggled a bit trying to get my foot in the door of the museum world: during most of my time there, the Cincinnati Museum Center was closed for renovations and the only museum I could afford to visit regularly was the Cincinnati Art Museum, where admission was free.

The fact that the Frazier is now offering free memberships to students is huge. The Frazier is part of the Louisville community, a community in which we want everyone—especially college students—to have access to us.

To be fully honest, I’m a member of the Frazier staff so I am a little biased—but I also genuinely love the Frazier. I started here as an education intern my second semester of graduate school. When my internship ended, I was invited to stay on as summer camp teacher. After working off and on during camp sessions for over a year, I was hired as a permanent member of staff. There are two reasons that I stayed with the Frazier: one, I work with an amazing group of people in the education department; and two, I love the Frazier and the work we’re doing. The Frazier is committed to being a museum for everyone and we’re working to reflect that in our exhibitions and programs.

If you’re still not sure about this, let me put it this way: student rates are common for museums, even discounted student memberships, but those still cost money. This membership is free—and that should be all the encouragement you need to take advantage of the opportunity. There’s something for everyone at the Frazier and we hope you stop in to visit us soon.

Nicole Clay
Education & Engagement Specialist

The Frazier History Museum is excited to extend our free membership program to college students. There are a lot of great ways to utilize this membership, from personal exploration to social time for individual students. Groups can also take advantage of this opportunity! We asked one of the professors with whom we routinely work, Dr. A. Glenn Crothers, to share some of the ways college classes can use the museum as a resource. If you’re interested in setting up a program for your class, please email education@fraziermuseum.org for more information!—Heather Gotlib, Manager of Youth & Family Programs

In spring 2019, for the first time, I began teaching Introduction to Public History at the University of Louisville, a course that prepares students for work in the field. The class seeks to advance students’ understanding of the ways the general public learns about and uses the past, of the efforts of public history institutions to become more inclusive to meet the needs and interests of diverse audiences, and of how public history professionals collaborate with a wide variety of stakeholders to develop relevant and timely exhibits and presentations. Staff at the Frazier History Museum—some of them graduates of the history department’s public history program—have played a key role in helping me achieve these goals.

Every semester, the class has traveled to the Frazier and met with Heather Gotlib, manager of youth and family programs, who discusses the institution’s evolution since its founding in 2004. Students learn in particular how the Frazier has reshaped its mission and goals in dialogue and cooperation with the Louisville and Kentucky community it serves. They also have the opportunity to tour the exhibitions—usually after the Frazier has closed its doors—and review an exhibition of their choice to understand how Frazier staff incorporate best public history practices in their work.

Fortuitously, each year the exhibitions on display have paralleled the research focus of the class. In fall 2019, for example, students interviewed members of the Louisville jazz community and during the visit to the Frazier had the opportunity to tour the recently opened Celebrating the Sounds of Kentucky, an exhibition co-curated by Louisville musicologist Michael Jones that explored the history of music in the city and state. In fall 2020, at the height of the pandemic, students studied how Frazier staff pivoted successfully to a variety of digital initiatives—including a remote class visit to the museum—to continue serving the Louisville community even while the doors remained closed.

That semester, students in the class also interviewed individuals involved in Louisville’s Black Lives Matter movement, at the same time as Frazier staff, responding to the protests taking place just blocks away in the renamed “Injustice Square,” began their collaboration with bloggers Walt and Shae Smith to develop West of Ninth: Race, Reckoning, and Reconciliation. That exhibition, which opened in September 2021, explored the history and diversity of the Black community in the West End of Louisville. Students in the fall 2021 iteration of the class spent considerable time touring and evaluating the West of Ninth exhibition because it offered a valuable example of contemporary public history best practice as they began their class project: an investigation of how over two decades ago one local history institution, despite the best of intentions, developed a flawed and controversial exhibition about Black history.

In fall 2022, the class investigated how public history institutions can “decolonize” their holdings and exhibitions—that is, undo the impact of colonial practices and attitudes and create more inclusive and diverse public offerings. Once again, the class visit to the Frazier proved enlightening, as students had the opportunity to tour the museum’s new exhibition, opened in September 2022, The Commonwealth: Divided We Fall. The exhibition foregrounds Kentucky’s Indigenous history and dismantles a variety of myths about Native peoples that white Americans employed to justify the colonization of the Ohio River Valley.

The educational collaboration that has developed over the years between my public history classes and the Frazier will happily continue. In fall 2023, the class will work with the Eliza Tevis Society and Frazier staff to study the life of Tevis, a formerly enslaved Black woman who in the nineteenth century helped found the Newburgh community. Students in the class will expand the research already completed by society members and collaborate with Frazier staff to help develop public presentations about Tevis. The project will give students an opportunity to pursue a fertile public history project in cooperation with both community stakeholders and the Frazier staff.

Public history, I emphasize to students, is a collaborative enterprise. So, I have discovered, is teaching the field. The Frazier and its staff have been among the most helpful of partners in this ongoing endeavor.

A Glenn Crothers
Associate Professor of History, University of Louisville
Guest Contributor

From the Collection: Rewaxing of Stewart Historic Miniatures Open to Public

The Frazier History Museum is home to the Charles W. Stewart Historic Miniatures Collection. This world-class collection houses roughly 30,000 historic miniatures and represents approximately 180 different makers. Some sets are simply one piece while some sets are made up of thousands of pieces. You can see most of this collection on display in the Stewart Galleries on the second floor of the museum.

If you’ve visited the museum before, you might how found yourself in the Stewart Galleries looking at all of the different types of toy soldiers and historic miniatures. However, from Wednesday, January 11, through Friday, January 20, you’ll have an opportunity to see how we get the miniatures to line up so perfectly for display! We will be closing part of the gallery to clean and repair lights—and that means that we will have to wax down the miniatures onto plexiglass bases. We will be doing this work in the second-floor classroom, the Marshall Charitable Foundation Education Center.

We encourage guest to come on in and see how we get these incredible pieces lined up and put together. It’s a great opportunity to see how we do what we do here at the Frazier History Museum.

Tish Boyer
Collections Manager

Wilderness Trail 6-year Rye Tapped for Bourbon Limited Release!

As the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, the Frazier History Museum shares stories of the people, places, and producers of the Kentucky Bourbon industry. To learn more, visit our Kentucky Bourbon Trail® Welcome Center or tour our Spirit of Kentucky® exhibition.—Simon Meiners, Communications & Research Specialist

We’re so excited that to announce that our Bourbon club, Bourbon Limited, will be shipping out the second selection at the end of this month!

What is it? It's Wilderness Trail Distillery’s FIRST release of a 6-year rye whiskey. There are ONLY TWO BARRELS—and when they’re gone, they’re gone.

Walker Woodfill, the world’s only whiskey-powered spirit safe, is depicted on the label of this exclusive release. Walker Woodfill is the copper man pushing a copper barrel inside the spirit safe at Wilderness Trail. He first began his journey six years ago. Now, Bourbon Limited club members are getting the first rye whiskey to flow through its chambers. You can hear more about this whiskey in an interview I did with Dr. Pat Heist, co-owner and chief scientific officer at Wilderness Trail, on our Facebook page.

How can you get it? You need to be a member of Bourbon Limited. Membership is free, you just pay for bottles, shipping, and taxes every two to three months. As mentioned before, we’re only getting two barrels of this amazing Wilderness Trail Rye and we’ve already sold ninety percent of it, so hurry and join. Another benefit of being a member: we’ll be taking a field trip to their distillery for a behind-the-scenes tour and tasting. We hope you come along!

Cheers!

Haley Hicky
CMO & Unicorn Wrangler, Bourbon Limited

Beat the Winter Doldrums with a Tiny Tour and Tasting

Now that the hustle and bustle of the holidays are in our rearview mirrors and the dreaded post-holiday blahs are upon us, I have a fantastic solution to combat this annual phenomenon: book a Tiny Tour with yours truly for some Bourbon education and a fantastic Bourbon tasting in our Speakeasy!

Our partners at the local Bourbon distilleries are still operating at full capacity, so for them booking tours and tastings is still a challenge. Through my Tiny Tours program for groups with a minimum of eight people, I can offer: admission to the Frazier, a guided tour of the Spirit of Kentucky® Bourbon exhibition, and a tasting of three different Bourbons in our Speakeasy for as little as $25 per person. As the official starting point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®, the Frazier offers the perfect outing to get a detailed and fun dive into the history of Bourbon as well as a private Bourbon tasting for you and your group in our Speakeasy. Many a problem has been solved Sippin’ with Stephen and I invite you and your group to come find out for yourselves. A Tiny Tour is the perfect way for folks to celebrate a birthday, an upcoming wedding, an anniversary, or just a day out with friends.

Please contact me at 502-753-5666 or syates@fraziermuseum.org with any questions or to book a Tiny Tour.

Stephen Yates
Community & Corporate Sales Manager

Museum Store: Head in KY Pom-pom Beanies

Keep your head in KY while keeping it warm and cozy! Scoop one of these hand-knit pom-pom beanies in the Frazier’s Museum Store or online.

Bridging the Divide

Louisville Metro Dedicates Black Six Historical Marker Following Frazier Program

It was a moving ceremony and historical marker dedication to remember a painful chapter in our history: the prosecution of the Louisville Black Six, which dates back to 1968.

The six individuals—African American business people and activists—were falsely accused of plotting to destroy buildings in the West End during several days of protests.

Those protests were held in the wake of a traffic stop for which a police officer was fired, then reinstated.

The arrests of the Black Six and their subsequent court case took an unimaginable toll on them: Ruth Bryant, Walter “Pete” Cosby, James Cortez, Sam Hawkins, Manfred Reid, and Robert Kuyu Sims.

In the end, Judge Rush Nicholson ruled prosecutors hadn’t presented enough evidence to warrant the charges and directed the jury to issue a verdict of not guilty.

Last May, the case was the subject of a program at the Frazier History Museum program at which then-Mayor Greg Fischer issued a formal apology.

On December 30, in his final news conference, Mayor Fischer unveiled a historic marker in a ceremony that included members of the Black Six, their families, and other key players in the case.

The two surviving members, Sam Hawkins and Manfred Reid, both spoke, thanking the Mayor for acknowledging the wrongs of the past.

Mayor Fischer chose this dedication as his last official news conference, saying “I wanted this official Metro Government acknowledgement of this history, this injustice, and this historical recognition to be my last act as Louisville’s fiftieth Mayor, symbolizing, I hope, how important the march toward justice is.”

Make sure you visit the marker at Sixth and Congress Alley, a spot chosen for its proximity to where the trial of the Black Six took place.

And if you missed our program back in May, click here to learn more about the Black Six and all they endured.

Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement