With our newly completed building and renovations, the Filson now has three new exhibit spaces, which currently contain two photography exhibits and one collection of presidential election artifacts and memorabilia. At the following dates and times, our curators will be giving special, in-depth tours of the exhibits.

Tuesday, December 6th at 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday, December 14 at 10:30 a.m.
Tuesday, December 20 at 3:30 p.m.

To the Polls! Presidential Campaigns and Elections – A timely exhibit, To the Polls is a collection of election memorabilia dating back to our country’s founding. Newspaper clippings, photographs, posters, broadsides, buttons, and even a pair of bobbleheads, these artifacts give an overview of the ways in which courting voters has evolved. The exhibit is organized by periods of expanding suffrage, with each new demographic gaining the right to vote changing how politicians approached their campaigns. Visitors will not only see items from each of these periods, but will learn about both the admirable and less admirable aspects of the democratic process.  

Moments in Time: The Power of Pictures - The Filson’s photograph collection is composed of more than 100,000 photographic prints, negatives, slides, daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes and includes work by both professional and amateur photographers. This exhibit documents photography from the mid-19th century to today, with the bulk of images depicting life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It demonstrates the diversity of the Filson’s photograph and film collections in both format and content. From candid snapshots to carefully composed portraits, these images tell stories of life in Kentucky and the surrounding states. The images in the exhibit were selected with consideration of aesthetic value as well as subject matter, uniqueness of format, and ability to surprise.

The Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston Mountain Photograph Collection, 1882-1905 – The Mountain Photograph Collection consists primarily of photographs taken in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, Eastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. In 1882 Thruston was hired as a geological assistant under Albert Crandall of the Kentucky Geological Survey. The Survey’s goal was to explore and record the natural resources in Appalachian counties. The photographs in this exhibit were produced during the mid-1880s when Thruston and Crandall worked for the Kentucky Geological Survey, and from the 1890s through the early 20th century when Thruston continued to work and document Appalachia during his time with the Kentucky Union Land Company. The counties featured in this exhibit include: Bath, Bell, Breathitt, Breckinridge, Carter, Elliott, Floyd, Harlan, Knox, Letcher, Pike, Whitley, and Wolfe in Kentucky, and Wise and Lee in Virginia.  A member of one of Louisville’s most prominent families, Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston was an engineer by education and vocation, and historian and photographer by avocation. Thruston was also a benefactor and longtime president of The Filson Historical Society (1923-1946).