By Kevin Murphy Wilson | Photos provided by FHS and Megan Coleman Photography
Dr. Patrick A. Lewis is a noted author, historian, and the newly named President + CEO of the Filson Historical Society—a beloved institution that has remained an important community resource since its founding in 1884. We recently caught up with Lewis to hear about his own professional journey and what the future holds for Old Louisville’s history hub.
VT: Can you please tell us a little bit about your own background?
PL: “Growing up in Trigg County [located in the Pennyrile region of Kentucky] was the best preparation for my life as a historian. The past was all around me in the water, the creeks, and the farm fields, and my dad really made that come alive. I started practicing historic interpretation at Fort Donelson National Park just across the county line from us in Tennessee and then after college I was really lucky tobe able to work at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park which introduced me to thinking about not only what happened in the past, how we talk about it carefully, how we research it, but also how it feels to the American public. We have a challenge of gettingpeople interested in knowing about their past seeing their place in it but also being willing to challenge myths and misperceptions. Growing up in the small-town-South, I grew up with a fair amount of those myself and was really challenged when I went to Transylvania Universityin Lexington to examine the ways that my understanding of local and Kentucky history had been shaped to exclude people from the record of the past and from full participation in the society of the present.”
VT: What excites you most about the study of history now?
PL: “I love the ability that the study of history gives us to travel through time. You have these experiences when you’re handling a 200 year old letter or standing on a mountain side where a historic battle was fought, crawling through an archaeological site, or sometimes having asensory experience getting food from historic recipe or hiking through an old growth forest, that transport you from your everyday experience into something that you know someone hundreds or thousands of years ago felt and did. When I was at ‘Transy’ I was a classicist, studying ancient history, traveling to Greece and Italy, and that resonated with me just as much as some experiences here in Kentucky. But ultimately, I wanted to be able to share that magical transportation with other people and make it meaningful for the people I cared about and so that led me in graduate school at the University of Kentucky to go back to my first love of American history, particularly of Civil War Kentucky.”
VT: How would you characterize the mission of your organization and the significance of Filson Historical Society both locally and nationally?
PL: “Filson’s mission is to collect, preserve and share the history and culture of Kentucky and the Ohio Valley and that is virtually unchanged from how it described its mission 140 years ago when it was founded. What’s important about it, though, is that the way we think about and live that mission is so much broader. We want to make sure that everybody who walks through our doors to see an exhibit, or to attend a lecture, or to do research feels welcome here, feels represented in our historical collections, sees their experience documented, celebrated, feels like they are welcome to contribute to our ongoing conversation about how our state and our region have come to be what makes them distinctive. In that sense of growing beyond the limitations of our founders but still guided by their good intentions, the Filson is like American democracy when it is at its best. We’re not bound to our past, we’re inspired by it, and we look to do better and strengthen ourselves by welcoming new voices to the table.”
VT: Besides the popular concert series, Jazz at the Filson, what other sort of activities does FHS facilitate for the community throughout the year?
PL: “Our calendar is always busy! We have a steady line up of book lectures and presentations by national historians. A few times a year we have our Gertrude Polk Brown lecture series which brings in national bestsellers. This June we will have Rick Atkinson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, to talk about the second book in his trilogy about the Revolutionary War. In the summer, we turn to focus on active learning with children through the cultural past program, often engaging those families in creative activities that respond to Filson exhibits and collections. In recent years we have done bus tours, and I hope to pair that with more on site experiences and hands-on learning that blend my National Parks background with our membership’s excitement to go experience the past directly.”
VT: In this line of work, how do you measure success?
PL: “We’ve been talking about new metrics of success as the year has kicked off. The Filson is really fortunate in that our members fill our event space every week. So, on one level you would look at a crowded room and think that there’s nowhere else to grow, but we’re challenging ourselves to bring new people in the door. We’re thinking intentionally about the topics of our programs—be that housing, sports history, the performing arts, or the past and future of the Black beauty pageant circuit—and connecting with a social group, a nonprofit, a local business, or some other space where people are excited about this topic but don’t necessarily think of themselves as ‘history people.’ We want to introduce ourselves to people who care about these topics and, through them, the future of their communities. The Filson wants to equip them with this deeper perspective on how whatever particular knot their organization is trying to untie, our historical perspective allows them to see how it came together in the first place. So, this year, not only do we want to see our space is full of people, but we’re also really getting into tracking the impact of these connections.”
For more information visit: filsonhistorical.org.