New Harmonies

 In 2008 the Kentucky Humanities Council, Inc. hosted a Smithsonian traveling exhibition called "New Harmonies: Celebrating American Roots Music." The portable, 5-kiosk display was developed by the Smithsonian especially for rural audiences and small museums without access to traveling exhibitions due to space and cost limitations.

The exhibit toured six Kentucky communities from March 2008 until December 2008. Sites were chosen based on their geographic location, ideas for events, and physical display space.  Many museums appied to host this exhibit.  The Kentucky Humanities Council decided to bring this exhibit back to Kentucky in 2012.

About the Exhibit: New Harmonies is a cultural history of America's musical landscape. It's the story of a diverse assortment of people interacting with a New World, a world where cultures and customs met, mixed, and mingled and created new sounds. The distinct cultural identities of all of these peoples are carried in song — both sacred and secular — and the music that emerges is known by names like blues, country, western, folk, jazz, and gospel. This exhibition tracks the unique history of many peoples reshaping each other into one incredibly diverse and complex people — Americans. It also promises a fascinating, inspiring, and toe-tapping listen to the American story of cultural exchange with its multi-media components. As a unique traveling exhibition, it is full of surprises about familiar songs, histories of instruments, the roles of religion and technology in shaping new sounds, and the continuity of musical roots from the colonial period to modern day punk and hip-hop.

Click here to go to the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street web site.


For more information, please contact Kathleen Pool at 859/257-5932 or kathleen.pool@uky.edu


Volunteer spends time looking at the Sacred Music
section of New Harmonies exhibit.

Volunteers built font porch for stage at the
Hwy 23 Country Music Museum in Paintsville.

Sue Ellen Grannis (left) shows off listening station to museum
volunteer at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center in Maysville.


Sarah Siegrest (left) instructs museum volunteer on installing 
artifacts for the New Harmonies exhibit at the Behringer
Crawford Museum in Covington


Maggie Pool tests the listening station for the New Harmonies
exhibit at the Bullitt County Public Library in Shepherdsville.