Beer Fest Flash Sale, 10 Years of Marriage Equality, Documenting Kentucky Gallery Talk Sunday, and More
Festivalgoers pose at last year’s Frazier Summer Beer Fest, July 27, 2024.
Happy Monday, Frazier fans!
Summer is almost here, and that means it’s time to get excited for one of downtown Louisville’s most anticipated summer traditions: Frazier Summer Beer Fest!
To kick off the season, we’re offering a special limited-time discount: 4 General Admission tickets for just $150. (That’s a savings of $50!)
Frazier Summer Beer Fest is a high-energy, outdoor celebration featuring 200+ specialty beers, local food trucks, live music, and a whole lot of fun on Main Street. Whether you’re a craft beer enthusiast or just love a good time, this event has something for everyone.
But don’t wait—this special ticket bundle is only available from now until Monday, May 19, at 11:59 p.m.
Grab your crew, snag your tickets early, and we’ll see you on Main Street this summer!
In today’s issue of Frazier Weekly, Rachel Platt announces a new program on marriage equality. Mick Sullivan reveals how a Boston scientist rediscovered the scent of an extinct local flower, the perfume of which is now available in our Museum Shop! Kent Klarer teases exciting details about our summer camps. Plus, guest contributors preview an upcoming Documenting Kentucky exhibition gallery talk and a special concert about the Underground Railroad at the Town Clock Church. Last, one of my dearest friends recaps her first Kentucky Derby experience at Churchill Downs!
Thanks for reading.
Leslie Anderson
Sr. Manager of Grants & Community Development
Frazier History Museum
This Week in the Museum
From the Collections: Louisa Anderson’s Wedding Hat, 1910
Wedding hat worn by Louisa Anderson at her June 1, 1910, wedding. Part of the Frazier History Museum’s collections.
Our latest exhibition, Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage, celebrates 150 years of Kentucky wedding traditions.
While I don’t do the historical research or write for our exhibitions, I do get the unique job of researching our collection so we can know more about it when we display it to the public. So, today, I want to spotlight a specific object from the exhibition: a day hat from 1910.
I say it’s a day hat because it’s made of pale colored straw and fixed with flowers and a white silk ribbon. While it is a beautiful piece, it is typical of hats women wore at this time to go shopping or call on friends and family during the day. There is nothing about this hat that tells us it’s formal, except perhaps the silk ribbon.
So why is this hat in our exhibition? What is its significance?
On June 1, 1910, Louisa Anderson of Louisville, Kentucky, married Philip Edmund Waters of Oldham County. She wore this hat as part of her ensemble.
Sadly, we do not have Louisa’s wedding dress. But we know from the family that she wore a blue silk with a white pattern dress as well as this hat. You see, Louisa was older when she got married and felt that she was too old to get married in white. Born in 1877, Louisa was thirty-three when she got married. She still went on to have a full life, having nine children and eight grandchildren. She died in 1965.
Come see Louisa’s wedding hat on display in our new exhibition Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage.
Tish Boyer
Registrar & Manager of Collections Engagement
Frazier Announces Bridging the Divide Program “10 Years of Marriage Equality”
10 Years of Marriage Equality graphic.
On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court extended the right to marry to same-sex couples nationwide, requiring states to recognize and license same-sex marriages. That landmark decision was known as Obergefell v. Hodges. Plaintiffs in several states, including Kentucky, filed federal court cases that ultimately culminated in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Join us June 24 as we gather many of those Kentucky plaintiffs and some of their attorneys to discuss the ten-year anniversary. We’ll also talk about the political, social, and religious climate moving forward. This Bridging the Divide program is free, but RSVPs are required. Click here to learn more about the program and our special guests that evening. And please come and visit our Davis Jewelers’ Love & Marriage exhibition at the Frazier.
Rachel Platt
VP of Mission
How a Boston Scientist Captured the Scent of an Extinct Kentucky Flower
Future Society’s Grassland Opera fragrance sold in the Frazier’s Museum Shop.
In the 1860s, a Louisville botanist named Dr. Charles Wilkins Short collected specimens of a plant known as the scurfpea from Rock Island in the Falls of the Ohio. Once a popular food source for bison crossing the river, it has never been observed anywhere else. With changes to that stretch of river by canalization and damming, the scurfpea plant slowly disappeared. No one has seen—or smelled—the scurfpea since 1881.
Nearly a century and a half later, Boston-based scientist Christina Agapakis explored the idea of recreating the scent of an extinct flower. After considering many options, Dr. Short’s sample of the Falls-of-the-Ohio-Scurfpea at the Havard herbarium was chosen. Collaborating internationally with scientists led to the first results—an installation in 2019 at the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum that allowed guests to smell the scientifically recreated extinct flower.
I’ve been interested in Dr. Agapakis’s project for years. Earlier this year, she put me in contact with people at Future Society, a scent company who collaborated with GingkoBioworks, where Dr. Agapakis had worked on the project. Future Society recently debuted a commercial scent, a perfume, based on the now-extinct flower that grew in only one place in the world: the Falls of the Ohio.
Dr. Short had deep ties to the area, from Transylvania University to the Hayfield neighborhood in Louisville, which is named after his home near Atherton High School. His botany work is well respected and impactful. So, if you wind up wearing the scent—which we have for sale at the Frazier’s Museum Shop—you’ll do more than smell great: you’ll also be tying yourself to a lot of local history and some amazing modern science.
Mick Sullivan
Curator of Guest Experience
Museum Shop: Future Society’s Grassland Opera
Future Society’s Grassland Opera fragrances sold in the Frazier’s Museum Shop, May 9, 2025.
When you love Kentucky and hear about a perfume inspired by a flower that once grew on a lost island in the Ohio River, it’s hard not to get excited. Grassland Opera is a fragrance like no other—recreated from the scent of the extinct Falls of the Ohio scurfpea, last seen in Louisville in 1881. It opens with notes of bergamot and clary sage, then unfolds into a lush blend of ylang-ylang, jasmine, sandalwood, and patchouli. The result? A crisp, verdant scent that’s energizing and unforgettable. Find Grassland Opera in the Frazier’s Museum Shop and online.
Frazier Offering Eight Weeks of Summer Camps, June 4–August 1!
The Frazier’s Simon Meiners interviews four longtime campers about their experience at the Frazier’s summer camps, 2024. See the full interview on Instagram!
The last day of school is rapidly approaching, and with it comes the start of that most cherished of parental traditions: signing your kids up for summer camp!
Here at the Frazier, we offer eight weeks of camp starting June 4 and ending August 1. For every camp, we work hard to create unique lessons on diverse subjects like music, engineering, native birds, noodles, the Bermuda Triangle, goats, goat-like cryptids, G.O.A.T.s, boats, moats, coats, and more! Plus, we bring in local artists and teachers who tell Kentucky stories and share Kentucky culture in ways that broaden our campers’ understanding of who Kentuckians are and where we come from.
I’m especially excited for Camp Takeover, July 7–11, where students learn what goes into creating a summer camp, then plan it out and execute the most creative camp activities we see each year. With a little guidance and a lot of willing participation from staff and campers alike, some spectacular and original ideas are brought to fruition.
Kent Klarer
Sr. Manager of Youth Programs & Education Advancement
Documenting Kentucky Exhibition Photographers to Lead Gallery Talk Sunday
Bridge Painters. McCracken County. 1977. Credit: Bob Hower.
Six-year-old Sophia Watching a TikTok Video. Floyd County. 2018. Credit: Brittany Greeson.
The Frazier’s newest exhibition Documenting Kentucky: Three Photographic Surveys is a sight to behold. On display are 150 historic photographs of the people and places of Kentucky, with subjects ranging from the bridge painters of Jackson Purchase to the TikTok users of Appalachia, captured between 1935 and 2024! Join us Sunday, May 18, at 2 p.m., when two of the photographers, Ted Wathen and Bob Hower, will lead a gallery talk. Access is free with the cost of museum admission. The talk will be the first of three offered during the run of the exhibition, which closes November 9. For today’s Frazier Weekly issue, we’ve asked Ted to shed some light on this one-of-a-kind exhibition.—Simon Meiners, Communications & Research Specialist
Imagine looking at one state in forty-year intervals . . .
The exhibition Documenting Kentucky: Three Photographic Surveys does just that at the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.
Between 1935 and 1943, Roosevelt’s New Deal Resettlement Administration (RA) and Farm Security Administrations (FSA) sent photographers all over the United States creating what came to be the visual record of the Great Depression. Photographing in Kentucky were Russell Lee, Ben Shahn, Carl Mydans, Esther Bubley, John Vachon, and most notably Marion Post Wolcott.
In the era before television and the internet, news came to Americans through newspapers, magazines, and movie newsreels. RA and FSA released their images to these sources. As director Roy Stryker said, “We were introducing America to Americans.”
With the American Bicentennial imminent, I founded the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project (KDPP) in 1975 with the goal of photographing in each of the state’s 120 counties. Informed by the National Endowment for the Arts that the Project could possibly receive funding if I added at least two more photographers, I enlisted Bill Burke and Bob Hower. Their work was exhibited at the Speed Art Museum, the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Frazier History Museum revived KDPP’s work in 2011 as Rough Road: The Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project 1975–77. The response to that exhibition was so strong that Hower and I reincorporated KDPP and hired a diverse group of twenty-six photographers to document the state anew beginning in 2015.
Open April 24 to November 9, Documenting Kentucky: Three Photographic Surveys is a visual tone poem to the state of Kentucky interweaving photographs from the three documentary projects. What you see:
· How we looked
· How we worked
· How we used the land
· How we worshipped
· How we lived
We hope you can attend.
Ted Wathen
Founder & Codirector, Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project
Guest Contributor
On the Trail with Abby: Bespoken Spirits in Lexington
On the Trail with Abby graphic.
Bourbon tourism is booming—and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® is growing faster than ever! Each week, the Frazier’s Abby Flanders takes readers on a digital stop-by-stop tour of this expanding adventure, spotlighting the distilleries, stories, and expressions behind America’s native spirit. Ready to hit the trail in real life? Start your journey at the Frazier History Museum, the Official Starting Point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail®.
Interior of Bespoken Spirits.
What happens when a Silicon Valley mindset meets Kentucky’s most iconic industry? You get Bespoken Spirits—a bold, tech-driven distillery that’s challenging Bourbon tradition one barrel at a time.
Rather than relying on years of aging in oak warehouses, Bespoken uses a patented “ACTivation” process—an innovative method that tailors aroma, color, and taste (ACT) at the molecular level. The result? Whiskey crafted in days, not decades, without sacrificing complexity or character.
Bespoken’s American whiskey and Bourbon have taken home over 150 medals in blind tastings, a clear sign that their science-backed spirits are more than just a novelty. From spicy high-rye blends to rich, smooth Bourbons, each expression is scientifically crafted to hit specific tasting notes. Brands or superfans can even design their own spirit lines. Take Hell House American Whiskey, for example, presented by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and brought to life with the help of Bespoken Spirits.
Located in Lexington, Kentucky, Bespoken’s facility offers a sleek, modern tasting experience that looks much more lab than log cabin. Curious visitors can sample their award-winning lineup, including specials batches like Hell House, and learn how data and design are reshaping the future of responsible whiskey production.
Bespoken might not look or age like its predecessors, but they’re earning interest on the trail for their unique attention to innovation and sustainability. Cheers to that!
Abby Flanders
Administrative Chief of Engagement
Bridging the Divide
New Albany Church to Host Voces Novae Concert on Underground Railroad
Kentuckiana played a central role in the Underground Railroad and served as a major corridor for enslaved men, women, and children fleeing bondage. Later this month, the choral group Voces Novae will offer a concert honoring the stories of the Underground Railroad, held in a location with historic ties that the Frazier Museum has been pleased to work with over the years: Second Baptist Church of New Albany, also known as Town Clock Church. We are also proud to offer The Journey, an immersive storytelling experience that uncovers the hidden stories of people and places in our community with close ties to this resistance story. You can learn more about the upcoming program, and how to purchase tickets, in the following article.—Megan Schanie, Sr. Manager of School & Teacher Programs
Vocalists perform during a Voces Novae concert, 2025.
Angela Vaughn Hampton directs during a Voces Novae concert, 2025.
A Stop on the Underground Railroad
Edward Caruthers, Featured Guest Soloist
Saturday, May 31, at 3 p.m.
Sunday, June 1, at 7 p.m.
Second Baptist Church
300 East Main Street
New Albany, Indiana
Experience unique music and stories honoring the Underground Railroad through a concert called A Stop on the Underground Railroad. The concert is presented by Voces Novae, a semi-professional choral group of vocal musicians from the Kentuckiana area. The concert will be performed on May 31 at 3 p.m. and June 1 at 7 p.m. at the Second Baptist Church of New Albany, which was an actual stop on the Underground Railroad.
The performance aims to honor the enslaved men, women, and children who came through the area on their courageous journey to freedom, as well as the local townspeople and parishioners who operated the escape route, by highlighting the struggle for freedom, the river journey, and images of riding the train to freedom and divine deliverance. The program includes a song giving actual directions for the path to freedom from slavery. Local baritone Edward Caruthers will be featured as a guest soloist to help tell this story.
Even though there were many paths in the Underground Railroad that enslaved people used to seek freedom, Louisville and New Albany were major escape routes. Part of this network incorporated safe hiding places, ferry boats, and even a real railroad. One of the routes to freedom involved the concert venue, Second Baptist Church in New Albany (often referred to as the Town Clock Church), whose tower is visible from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, acting as a beacon for those trying to escape slavery. The church members and local townspeople helped shelter and care for freedom seekers and helped them to escape to the North. One of the parishioners of the church, who happened to be president of the New Albany and Salem Railroad, would often give free train tickets to enslaved people fleeing toward a new life in the North.
Seating for Voces Novae’s concert is limited; attendees are encouraged to purchase tickets early via Voces Novae’s website.
Angela Vaughn Hampton
Artistic Director, Voces Novae
Deborah Dierks
Collaborative Artist, Voces Novae
Guest Contributors
History All Around Us
New Pope’s Hometown Just 300 Miles from Kentucky
Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost, waves to spectators from the main central loggia balcony of the St Peter's Basilica in Rome, Italy, for the first time, after the cardinals ended the conclave, May 8, 2025. Credit: Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar.
Childhood home of Pope Leo XIV, May 8, 2025. The modest, 1,200-square-foot brick home is located at 212 East 141st Place in Dolton, Illinois. Credit: Michael Howie.
Habemus papam!
On Thursday, the conclave of bishops in Rome elected the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.
Chicago native Robert Prevost will lead the church as its 267th pontiff. He has taken the name Pope Leo XIV.
As a practicing Catholic, I enjoyed huddling over a coworker’s phone at lunch to livestream the ceremonies. But as a Frazier Museum employee, my first question was: does this American pope have any connection to Kentucky?
So far, I can’t find anything.
According to public records, Prevost’s family owned the home at 212 East 141st Place in Dolton, Illinois, near the South Side of Chicago, from 1949 through 1996.
Born in 1955, Prevost had a religious upbringing in that Dolton home. He grew up in the home with his parents, Louis and Mildred, and two brothers. His mother was a librarian, and his father was a principal, according to media reports. He graduated from the nearby St. Mary’s Catholic grammar school before entering the priesthood, a vocation that later led him to Peru.
Here in Louisville—some 300 miles south of the pope’s hometown—the Catholic Church has a long and impactful presence. The first Catholics came into Kentucky among the earliest settlers from the coastal colonies in 1775. Then, in 1808, Pope Pius VII established the Diocese of Bardstown, which later became the Diocese of Louisville. The Archdiocese of Louisville is the second-oldest diocese west of the Appalachian Mountains. The archbishop of Louisville is Shelton Fabre.
“I must admit, I never thought I would live to see the day than an American would be elected pope, but here we are today,” Archbishop Fabre said Thursday. “I hope he will continue to reach out to people on the margins. I hope he will continue to lift people up . . . I think it is a time of great joy for Catholics in this country to know that our faith here in this country, which is a relatively young country, a relatively young faith, has now produced a gift for all Catholics in the world.”
The archdiocese will hold a Mass of Thanksgiving for Pope Leo XIV today at 6 p.m. at the Cathedral of the Assumption in downtown Louisville.
Simon Meiners
Communications & Research Specialist
Emily Hathaway on her First Kentucky Derby
From left, friends Emily Hathaway and Leslie Anderson pose outside Churchill Downs during Thurby, May 1, 2025.
I met Emily in grad school at Tulane. Over the years, we have stayed close and we try to visit each other as often as we can. I invited Emily to visit me in Louisville this spring, and this gave her the chance to cross off a bucket list item: attending the Kentucky Derby! Her article gives a fresh take on the famous race and reveals a heartwarming family connection.—Leslie Anderson, Sr. Manager of Grants & Community Development
My grandfather was a betting man. My idea of betting on horse races is formed from pop culture references where a man gets to the betting window clutching a handful of crumpled bills desperate to make a last-minute bet that ruins him. I didn’t expect this scene to replay when I arrived at Churchill Downs. My stepfather, a regular Derby attendee in his undergrad days, advised me to bring cash, be prepared to wait in line to place my bets, and possibly miss the races I was betting on. To be honest, I was prepared not to bet at all. My grandfather died before he could teach me and I was nervous about not knowing what to do at the window. When I arrived and got advice from those who had been to Derby more recently, I was told to bet through an app, which turned out to be dangerously easy. I felt more confident in experimenting. Although I didn’t win big, my own last-minute bet on Spirit of Saint Louis was thrilling.
My grandmother was a model. I’m familiar enough with Derby to know that I was expected to show up, but it was absolutely stunning seeing all the fashion both at Thurby and Derby. The only way to describe the atmosphere created by the outfits is dapper—it felt like stepping out of time. Our Uber driver spoke of costumes, but I believe reenactment is a better term. There may be no better people watching in the world than at Derby. I was originally concerned about the time between races—what would we do to entertain ourselves?—but there was so much to see! I spent Thurby with seats in the Clubhouse that gave us a wonderful view of people milling around, allowing us to observe and start planning our outfits for next year. Especially impressive were the people in the infield, where I spent Derby. While I opted to dress down, leaving the fascinator at home and wearing shoes I planned to dispose of, many members of the infield commit despite the weather. The infield reminded me of the chaos of a music festival, New Orleans Jazzfest in particular, but with guests dressed in their Easter best.
My mother lives vicariously through me. Her first ever flight was to visit Churchill Downs, but as a toddler and not for Derby. Although I’ve had my grandmother’s pearls for a while, she insisted on loaning me a matching bracelet. I was constantly bombarded with messages asking about the event, for pictures, to place bets for her, with trivia about how all the horses running the Derby this year are descendants of Secretariat. Her reports about TV coverage kept me informed of things I would have missed while in the infield. She has already started planning her own trip to Derby for next year based on my reports: Derby was a beautiful chaos that left me feeling connected to absent members of my family in ways I didn’t expect. I learned more than I knew to ask about and cannot wait to return to the races.
Emily Hathaway
Guest Contributor
