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Monday, April 14, 2008

Ind. Gov't. - More on: Indiana, Land of Lincoln

Updatng this ILB entry from March 9th, where I wrote: "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" that the nationally known Lincoln Museum] is closing its doors and selling off its collection, today Emma Downs of the JG reports:

The Lincoln Museum will close its doors in June. But a new home for its $20 million collection will not be decided until early 2009, a spokeswoman for Lincoln Financial Foundation said Friday.

“This will be a very thorough process,” said Sandy Kemmish, director of the foundation.

“We expect to narrow it down to three organizations by August or September. Following that, we will visit their organizations by October or November. All this will happen before we make our decision.”

Representatives from 35 organizations – including the Allen County Public Library and the Friends of the Lincoln Museum – attended an informational meeting Thursday at Lincoln headquarters in Philadelphia, during which the process for choosing the new owner of the museum’s collection was discussed.

At the meeting, groups interested in acquiring all or part of the collection were told what will be expected of the new owner or owners. * * *

Although Kemmish did not name all of the organizations represented at the meeting Thursday, museums and organizations from as far away as California were in attendance, as were representatives from Indiana, she said.

But the library is hopeful that it will end up as one of the organizations in the running to house the Lincoln documents, Ferverda said.

“We are very cognizant that many other organizations are vying for this collection and, specifically, these documents,” she said. “But we would love to see those documents stay in Indiana and stay in Fort Wayne. And we would hope we would be the obvious place for that.”

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 14, 2008 02:09 PM
Posted to Indiana Government