Exciting New Museum In Springfield, Illinois

[pineda]

Lincoln Library and Museum

Just watching this on Ch. 11 and it looks fantastic!

A related museum website

[editor]

There was an interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about all the things that are wrong with this museum. Specifically, all of the revisionist history.

Two things that I remember offhand were that the Lincoln's wake scene is closed-casket instead of open casket. Local teachers thought the children would find it too scary to see a real-looking dead body in a casket. Of course, this comes just a week after two billion people watched the Pope's funeral on TV around the world. And it is an historical problem because it is important to the historical record that Lincoln's body was paraded from city to city for weeks in a train car so that thousands and thousand of people could see his body. He even traveled with two embalmers who did touch-up jobs when they were needed.

Another, perhaps more important, thing they changed were the words that Lincoln's assassin spoke when he shot the president. In real life he yelled to the audience the Latin phrase that translates as "Death to this and all tyrants." The library changed it to something like "I have killed Lincoln" which does a complete disservice to history. It erases the notion that anyone might not have liked Lincoln and thought of his presidency as a tyranny.

Also, in one mock-up of Lincoln's office or something they changed the color of the carpet. It seems like a minor detail, but since the color of the carpet is known, it should remain accurate. The curators saiid they did it because it didn't go with the rest of the room.

Anyway, those first two points should be enough that any schoolchild who goes to the Lincoln library to do a report will get their grade reduced for for having wrong information, even though they got it from the Lincoln Library.

[editor]

I watched an hour-long special about it last night, and it might still be actually worth seeing. Outside, it disappointingy looks very much like the Bush library, or the Texas State Museum. Inside, though, they seem to have put a crapload of effort into the exhibits. I'm not sure if I'll ever get to see it though. Springfield, Illinois isn't all that high on my cities-to-see list.