Daily Tasting Experiences, DOJ Report Community Forum, Three Spots Left for Spring Break Camp, and More
Happy first day of spring, y’all. It’s about to get crazy here on Main Street—and our Frazier family is all about it!
This week the KFC Yum! Center is welcoming tens of thousands of college basketball fans to town as it hosts men’s NCAA Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight tournament games. With spring break travel, the kickoff of Kentucky Derby Festival, and Bourbon tourism all amping up at the same time, there’s an awful lot to look forward to in downtown Louisville.
Here at the Frazier, we are back open seven days a week with twelve outstanding exhibition options on view. We are also adding a Make Your Own Mint Julep Class to our already-diverse daily tasting schedule in the month of April. You can sign up on the spot or book any of our Kentucky Bourbon Trail® tasting experiences here.
Also this week, Amanda Egan is tracking the early leaders in the Membership Madness competition. Mindy Johnson highlights our museum store book This is Your Brain on Sports, also known as my brain all the time. We’re Sippin’ with Stephen, spring breaking with our campers, and reminding you to get here quick to see our Barrels of Heart exhibition.
I sure do hope you enjoy!
Andy Treinen
President & CEO
Frazier History Museum
This Week in the Museum
Current Leaderboard for Membership Madness
Our members-only NCAA DI Men’s Basketball Tournament Bracket Pool is back! Below, you’ll find the updated leaderboard and who is currently in the running to win that glorious 70” Samsung Class 4K Crystal UHD LED Smart TV with HDR! To learn more about this exclusive opportunity, visit the Membership Madness web page. Remember: members experience more here at the Frazier History Museum.—Amanda Egan, Membership & Database Administrator
Museum Store: This is your Brain on Sports
Front cover of This is your Brain on Sports, a book sold in the Frazier’s Museum Store. Credit: Frazier History Museum.
Why do Tom Brady and other starting quarterbacks look like models? Why do Cubs and Mets fans love rooting for a loser? Why do the best players make the worst coaches? A thought-provoking book caked This is your Brain on Sports answers these questions and many more. Pick up a copy now in the Frazier’s Museum Store or online.
Sippin’ with Stephen: Bourbon Tasting Experiences with Frazier Museum’s Heidi Janes
With so many out-of-towners visiting downtown Louisville’s West Main Street this week for the NCAA Tournament games at the KFC Yum! Center, we wanted to promote the many tasting experiences we offer here at the Frazier! 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
As the weather turns to spring, the number of visitors to the Derby City goes up exponentially and many folks arrive without having prebooking a Bourbon experience. This is where the Frazier Museum comes in! In today’s episode of Sippin’ with Stephen, Frazier manager of visitor services Heidi Janes and I discuss and highlight the various Bourbon experiences the Frazier offers its guests daily. Specifically, we talk about three different tasting experiences the Frazier offers—and how they can help Bourbon enthusiasts avoid getting shut out of a quality experience while they’re here in Louisville.
Please visit our website to get more details about each experience. We can’t wait to host you soon!
Stephen Yates
Community & Corporate Sales Manager
Frazier to Host First Bourbon Limited Members Club Event Friday
We’re thrilled to announce our first Bourbon Limited event at the Frazier Museum this Friday, March 24!
We’ll be joined by our first two club partners, Kentucky Peerless and Wilderness Trail, and sample the whiskeys they chose especially for us while representatives from their distilleries tell us tales and answer questions. We’ll also get to meet our partner-on-deck, Augusta Distillery, to hear about all the exciting things they have coming up, including information about our next Bourbon. This is a complementary event, but you must be a member of Bourbon Limited to attend. Click here for more information about joining the club.
We hope you’ll join us for a night of great Bourbon, food, and fun!
Cheers!
This is a 21+ event.
Haley Hicky
CMO & Unicorn Wrangler, Bourbon Limited
Barrels of Heart Exhibition to Close Next Week
The Barrels of Heart exhibition ends in less than two weeks, but its impact will endure beyond that.
Barrels of Heart graphic. Credit: Bourbon with Heart.
Curator Morgan Hancock, center, poses with the artists featured in Barrels of Heart at the Frazier, February 1, 2023. Credit: Bourbon with Heart.
We would like to express our gratitude to the Frazier History Museum for providing us with space to showcase these inspiring works of art to the community.
Thanks to the support of our sponsors, we raised an impressive $63,000 for the Bourbon with Heart mission, which aims to make the arts accessible to every Kentuckian and support other local nonprofits.
Although the barrels may have started as used, dusty, and splintered, they were given a new life through human imagination, community, and generosity. These barrels symbolize second chances and redemption, reminding us that it’s never too late to transform something old and worn into something new and beautiful.
As you walk through the exhibition, let the barrels take you on a journey through the heart of Kentucky and our artists’ hearts. Experience their love for this state and the beauty that they see in it. These barrels are more than just art pieces: they represent the resilience and creativity of our community. They show us that, no matter what life throws our way, we can turn it into something meaningful and inspiring.
Before the exhibition ends, come and experience Barrels of Heart and witness the powerful celebration of Kentucky’s love for its artists and arts community. You can see how these barrels embody art’s transformative power and the human spirit’s boundless generosity.
Morgan Hancock
Founder, Bourbon with Heart
Guest Contributor
Frazier to Host Community Forum The DOJ Report: The Way Forward
The DOJ Report: The Way Forward flyer. Credit: Frazier History Museum.
Changes are coming now that the Department of Justice has released a report outlining discriminatory and unconstitutional patterns and practices by the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government.
I say changes are coming because a federal judge will monitor the progress of adopting reforms as Louisville moves forward. The DOJ suggested thirty-six remedial measures for improvement.
Many groups like the NAACP and the Louisville Urban League are offering their own suggestions, as are citizens.
The River City Fraternal Order of Police put out a statement in part saying the report is an unfair assessment of the great work that is accomplished daily by the vast majority of LMPD officers.
So where do we go from here—and, if this isn’t the catalyst for real change and transparency, will it ever happen?
We need your voice at an upcoming Community Forum at the Frazier History Museum. We are teaming with the city’s Office of Equity on March 29 at 6 p.m. for The DOJ Report: The Way Forward.
Mayor Craig Greenberg and LMPD Chief Jackie Gwinn-Villaroel will join us along with Louisville Urban League President Dr. Kish Cumi Price and a representative from the River City FOP. Impacted community members will also be with us to share their perspective.
Please register here for this free program to help make Louisville the best it can be as we move forward, for everyone.
Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement
Only Three Spots Left in Spring Break Camp!
First things first: I am so grateful for the amazing youth and family community we have built at the Frazier! We just broke not only our Family Day attendance record, but our all-time attendance record in nineteen years of the Frazier being open. We so appreciated every single one of you who showed up on March 11.
On that note, our Spring Break Camps only have three spots left on Tuesday, April 4, and Wednesday, April 5. Monday is completely sold out!
Spring Break Pop-Up Camp: Favorite Things graphic. Credit: Frazier History Museum.
It’s going to be a fun few days—we’re talking about all our Favorite Things. There’s going to be karaoke, a special visit from the Belle of Louisville and the newly-minted childrens’ book author Tapper from the Louisville Water Company, activities that involved building things both huge and small with cardboard and recycled materials, and emus—and that’s about half of what’s on the schedule.
The link to sign up is here. I would definitely do so today while the space is still available!
Heather Gotlib
Manager of Youth & Family Programs
Columbus Signature Academy Students Display at Exhibits at Frazier
One of the best parts of my job is working with creative educators to offer unique experiences to students. When staff from Columbus Signature Academy New Tech High School in Columbus, Indiana, reached out to us several years ago to inquire about hosting student exhibitions for a day, we jumped at the opportunity. The project went so well that we continued for several years and were very excited to have them back this year after a break during COVID.
Two Columbus Signature Academy students present their exhibit to Frazier staff member Kevin Bradley, March 6, 2023. Credit: Frazier History Museum.
Frazier staff member Amanda Egan judges a Columbus Signature Academy student group’s exhibit on tenement housing in late-nineteenth-century America, March 6, 2023. Credit: Frazier History Museum.
If you came to the Frazier on March 6, you probably saw interactive student exhibits spread out on the first and second floors—exhibits on topics such as Henrietta Lacks, Watergate, the Gilded Age, and much more. Our Frazier team, museum guests, and staff from other nearby museums and cultural sites enjoyed learning from the students and their work.
For the first time this year, we also set aside some time for the students to hear from and enjoy Q and A with the Frazier exhibits and collections team to learn about their experiences as museum professionals. It added a great deal to the visit and I’m sure will continue to be incorporated in the years to come.
Megan Schanie
Manager of School & Teacher Programs
Tickets for April 19 Wade and Alice Houston Program Now Available
He grew up in Alcoa, Tennessee, she grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and together Wade and Alice Houston have made their mark in both places.
They are trailblazers and mentors in both sports and business, and they continue to give back to their respective hometowns. They are represented in our Kentucky Rivalries exhibition here at the Frazier.
Wade Houston as a child, undated. Credit: KET.
Alice Houston as a child, undated. Credit: KET.
Alice and Wade Houston, undated. Credit: KET.
Join us on April 19 as the Frazier teams with the city’s Office of Equity to interview the couple about leadership and how all of us can make an impact in our community.
Mayor Craig Greenberg will talk about the Houstons’ impact, and so will some other surprise guests.
Get your tickets now before they sell out!
And keep on reading today’s issue of Frazier Weekly to learn about an upcoming program with Kentucky to the World featuring Wade Houston and others—a program about breaking barriers at the University of Louisville.
Rachel Platt
Director of Community Engagement
Kentucky to the World: Basketball & Brotherhood: Breaking Barriers
In the Frazier’s Cool Kentucky exhibition, there’s a station where visitors can watch videos by Kentucky to the World—a nonprofit whose singular focus is to showcase extraordinary individuals with strong Kentucky ties, including geneticists, engineers, style icons, and more. We’ve asked our KTW partners to share info about a forthcoming program at the Kentucky Center.—Simon Meiners, Communications & Research Specialist
Basketball & Brotherhood: Breaking Barriers graphic. Credit: Kentucky to the World.
Kentucky to the World (KTW) returns to The Kentucky Center on Wednesday, April 12, bringing together University of Louisville basketball legends who changed history both on and off the court. Tickets are now available on the Kentucky Center website.
This conversation will explore the barrier-breaking era of desegregation with former U of L athletes who paved the way for future athletes and went on to become leaders in the community and business world. Learn more about the program and the distinguished guests on the KTW website.
Clips from the upcoming documentary Basketball & Brotherhood: Breaking Barriers, produced by Jessica Loving, Luke Whitehead, and well-known Louisville filmmaker Fred Reynolds, will be interwoven throughout the special evening.
Prior to the public program, Kentucky to the World will hold a special Student-Briefing program for local middle school through university-age students to provide them an opportunity to meet privately with our distinguished guests. Contact David Thurmond at david@kentuckytotheworld.org for more information on the Student-Briefing program and how to register your student.
Sarah Slayton
Influencer Coordinator and Community Manager, Go Social, Kentucky to the World
Guest Contributor
