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This must be how people felt the first time Lincoln was assassinated.
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.
My own relationship with the institution has been longer and closer than most, and I’m proud to disclose it. Back when I was a teenager, more years ago than I’d like to remember, legendary director R. Gerald McMurtry took me seriously enough to correspond with me, later urging me to specialize in Lincoln iconography – the study of political image-making. The encouragement and opportunities he provided helped transform my life, and I will forever be grateful.
Dr. McMurtry’s successor, Mark E. Neely Jr., became a fast friend and treasured colleague. Together, we delved deeper into the field, and with fellow historian Gabor Boritt authored a series of books that began in 1984 with “The Lincoln Image.”
Later, I was close at hand when Neely engineered the most spectacular of the museum’s many storied acquisitions: the Lincoln family’s trove of personal photographs, some unknown, many unique, all precious. Their arrival in Fort Wayne inspired yet another of our collaborations, “The Lincoln Family Album.”
In recent years, I’ve been privileged to enjoy no less close a relationship with the museum’s current CEO, Joan Flinspach. Under her able leadership, I was invited to curate an exhibition called “Lincoln from Life,” came to town to speak on many occasions, invited actor Sam Waterston to record Lincoln’s voice for the galleries, sat for a long interview there with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, and with the indefatigable Sara Vaughn Gabbard I co-edited one final book – who knew it was the end of an era? – “Lincoln and Freedom.” It will still be on sale – somewhere – but not at the Lincoln Museum gift shop, alas. Point made: The museum has been a second home to me. But I was astounded by the volume of e-mails that poured in last week from all parts of the country from writers who feel no less connected to the place.
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.
Consortiums are needed; advisers are required; ideas are needed. I am relieved to know that the company has already indicated its intention to convene a group to explore these possibilities. If it takes longer than four months to craft a plan, perhaps the chains can even be left off the doors for a few more months. One final exhibition of the collection’s best pieces would at least inspire the kind of send-off the place deserves.
Lincoln once warned, “We cannot escape history.” Lincoln Financial never has, and it shouldn’t now. Its historic obligation, first to Robert Lincoln himself when the foundation was first established, and all through the years as the collection was amassed, does not vanish with the publication of a news release.
Otherwise what has been described as a shutdown will in reality be an assassination.
