New exhibit centered on legacy of Kentucky slavery opens at the Speed Art Museum

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Speed Art Museum is giving guests a deeper look at Kentucky history in honor of Black History Month.

An exhibit, called "The Bitter and the Sweet: Kentucky Sugar Chests, Enslavement, and the Transatlantic World" is open now. It features desks, presses, bureaus and boxes used to store sugar from around 1790-1850.

The exhibit will reexamine the objects within the contexts of the Atlantic economy, including the vicious human toll of enslavement and the complex transportation and merchant systems that brought sugar to Kentucky from the West Indies and sugar-growing regions of the Americas.

"We'd like for people to come and admire the beauty and craftsmanship of these pieces of furniture but to gain a better historical and deeper understanding of why and how they came to exist in the first place," said Jennifer Downs, assistant curator of the Terra Foundation for American Art.

The exhibit is open through April 7.