‘Cool’ New Exhibit Unveiled at Flagship Louisville Museum
120: Cool KY Counties features stories & music from all around the Bluegrass state
Louisville, KY (March 15, 2024) – Louisville’s Frazier Museum has unveiled a new permanent exhibit called 120: Cool KY Counties featuring all of the counties in Kentucky.
The exhibit is housed in the Cool Kentucky exhibition on the first floor of the museum and consists of two touch-screen maps of Kentucky: when you touch a county, you’re shown content—an interesting text story, a video, and a song by a local artist—from that county. The content will continue to be expanded.
Stories featured in the exhibit span a range of subjects, including the birthplace of Dollar General (Allen County), the first iron ore furnace west of the Alleghanies (Bath County), the only US city built inside a meteorite crater (Bell County), the 2023 Softball Pitcher of the Year (Carter County), the world’s largest apple pie (Casey County), a famed NASCAR mechanic (Edmonson County), the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872 (Hardin County), a Hungarian mining co-op (Martin County), a Top Chef contestant (McCracken County), the town of Whoopflarea (Owsley County), the lost town of Creelsboro (Russell County), and Kentucky’s first woman State Bacteriologist (Warren County).
The exhibit also includes cases in which a handful of real objects from different counties will be displayed on rotation. When the exhibit opens Friday, the case will feature a wool coat (Adair County), a Mammoth Cave Hotel image (Barren County), minerals (Crittenden County), a Lincoln image (Fayette County), a WPA model (Henderson County), a miners image (Letcher County), a dress (Marion County), a tobacco artifact (Nicholas County), and woodcarvings (Wolfe County).
The Frazier Kentucky History Museum also houses the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® Welcome Center, which is the Official Starting Point of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail® offering Kentucky Bourbon Trail® field guides, trail maps and other trip-planning resources. Museum guests can enjoy The Spirit of Kentucky® exhibition celebrating the history, craft and culture of Bourbon whiskey - America's only native spirit.
While planning a trip to Louisville, guests can download a copy of Louisville Tourism’s annual Visitor Guide to see the city's top attractions and bourbon distilleries. Visitors also can get additional city attraction, lodging and dining assistance at gotolouisville.com.