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Sunday, March 09, 2008

Ind. Gov't. - Indiana, Land of Lincoln [Updated]

Columnist Bob Hill wrote in the Louisville Courier Journal Feb. 14th:

Three states now rightly claim Lincoln: Kentucky, where he lived his first seven years; Indiana, where he grew up, taught himself to read and write, and lived until he was 21; and Illinois, where he became a lawyer, got into politics — and returned in a flag-draped coffin as a martyred president.
Kentucky and especially Illinois make a big deal over Abraham Lincoln. The State of Indiana has done comparatively little. Now we read in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, in an opinion piece by renowned Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer:
For all the years I've been studying and writing about Abraham Lincoln, Fort Wayne's stupendous collection - whether it's been called the Lincoln National Life Foundation, the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum or in its most recent incarnation, the Lincoln Museum - has remained an indispensable resource, a captivating public attraction, a reliable refuge for scholars and a safe home for its countless treasures.

That is why, together with so many of my colleagues in the field, I find myself in profound mourning over the unexpected news of its imminent loss. My fellow historians are disappointed and outraged. I share their pain. * * *

Clearly, the museum will be missed by everyone who seeks inspiration from Lincoln's words and deeds and everyone who delves deeply into the past to illuminate the future. For behind the superb public displays lies a staggeringly deep collection of manuscripts, art and artifacts without access to which dozens of the best Lincoln books published this century - check the acknowledgments - would have been the weaker. To prepare my own next book, I spent countless profitable hours in the museum's legendary clipping files, unearthing gem after obscure gem - reminiscences, editorials, firsthand accounts - all but impossible to find anywhere else. My book will also boast several images from the Lincoln Museum collection. What recent Lincoln book has not?

So now the obvious, troubling question: What will become of it all? We are told the material will be digitized - making it more accessible. Even if we accept the implied argument that virtual reality is equal to the real thing, will this commitment extend to the clippings? The prints? If not, where will they go, and when?

We hear that the museum must lock its doors because school visitation has dipped from 12,000 to 7,000. But what will replace this crucial educational experience for the 7,000 local students who still profit from it? If money is not the issue, why not invest more, not less, in the educational mission and rebuild school visitation instead of throwing out the baby with the bath water?

Finally, what of any museum's most sacred trust: its collections? The Lincoln Museum owns the last painting for which Lincoln ever sat (“horribly like the original,” he joked when he first saw it), copies of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment, relics he used and touched, documents and manuscripts he wrote in his own hand, sculptures, broadsides, sketches and thousands of prints. Not to mention that Lincoln Family Album - the one-of-a-kind photos of his children he displayed in his own home, took with him to Washington. These are not surplus goods: They are the tangible lifelines to our greatest American.

In the end, I suppose a museum may elect to limit its public hours, or worse, shut its doors forever, whatever the impact on its public, its scholars or its home. But those of us who have revered and relied on the Lincoln Museum - and the institution's own benefactors - have a moral obligation to safeguard the holdings and ensure both perpetuation and access. Cohesiveness would be nice, too. The institution has worked so hard to amass its holdings. It would add insult to injury to scatter it, lock it away or sell it off. There are plenty of fine new spaces that lack collections of equal grandeur - like the new Tredegar Museum in Richmond, Va., or the soon-to-open Civil War Museum in Philadelphia. With apologies to Fort Wayne, why not a request for proposals to house and preserve the Lincoln Museum trove?

To be sure, Lincoln Financial has been heroic in its decades-long commitment to the museum. Its generosity has been extraordinary. But lock the doors, walk away, and scatter the collections it simply cannot do.

The is certainly an opportunity for the State of Indiana that likely will never come again.

[Updated] See this March 12th article by sometime Indianapolis Star columnist Andrea Neal, headed "Bicentennial's coming; save Lincoln collection."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 9, 2008 11:19 AM
Posted to Indiana Government