By Joanne Prim Shade
Special to the Journal & Topics Newspapers
The new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, which opened in April, is not your usual Presidential building or tribute.
For one thing, it's not a shrine, not a tomb, not a hush-hush place.
The museum is a combination of showmanship and scholarship, high-tech and history, a sense of the past merged with what used to be called the wave of the future ‹ only it's here now in the town where Lincoln once lived.
The stately museum building in downtown Springfield is just a block away from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, which houses and preserves artifacts and documents from the Lincoln years.
The contents of the new museum include a replica of Lincoln's boyhood home in Indiana, a partial model of the White House in Lincoln's time, a hand-written copy of the Gettysburg Address and a pair of gloves in the President's pocket the night he was assassinated at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C.
A temporary exhibition, through Oct. 16, will display artifacts such as the bed Lincoln died in, on loan from the Chicago Historical Society, and the carriage in which the Lincolns rode to Ford's Theater.
But there are also interactive displays, state-of-the-art exhibits and two eye-popping holographic special-effect theaters that present the Lincoln story in new ways. "Lincoln's Eyes" and "Ghosts of the Library" are the titles of the shows.
The sound-effects alone can be spectacular, and at times you can feel the seats shake right underneath you.
BRC Imagination Arts in the Los Angeles area is responsible for many of the special effects.
"We believe we've reinvented what a Presidential library is, and possibly the history museum, with what we're doing," says Bob Rogers, a former Walt Disney designer, now chairman of BRC Imagination Arts. "It's putting you into history. We're not going to tell you about history. We're not going to show you about history. We're going to let you experience it yourself.
"We put the visual first and the verbal second," Rogers adds.
Richard Norton Smith, executive director of the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, endorses these concepts.
"If this didn't have intellectual substance and good history, I wouldn't be here," he says.
"We hope young people will walk out wanting to know still more."
And then there are the mannequins in the museum. They have life-like facial color and, in some cases, flushed cheeks that lift them above the stiff and statue-like figures usually seen in museums. Their costumes fit, and their hair looks real.
The mannequins are the stars in a series of "scenes" that depict various times in Lincoln's life, including his law office days in Springfield, the Lincoln-Douglas debates and the Lincolns at the deathbed of their son Willie.
In contrast, "Campaign 1860," offers a modern-day look at the presidential race of 1860, complete with TV monitors and 30-second commercials promoting each of the four candidates.
In the Whispering Gallery, unseen voices spew ridicule, slander and invective about the newly-elected President, as well as Mrs. Lincoln. On the walls, caricatures and political cartoons attack the Lincolns.
One of the most popular displays features mannequins of the Lincoln family gathered in front of a scale-model of the White House South Portico.
But off to one side stands the assassin John Wilkes Booth.
It makes you want to go over to the Lincolns and warn them, "Don't go to the theater!"
But it is too late for that. Even with high-tech wizardry, we can't stop time.
And so, elsewhere in the museum, figures of the Lincolns sit in a box at Ford's Theater enjoying "Our American Cousin" while Booth makes his move.
What follows is an explanation of the lengthy pageant of grief. The President's inaugural trip is retraced, concluding in Springfield, where his body lies in state at in the Hall of Representatives in the Old State Capitol.
In the museum, the Hall is replicated to scale. A flower-flanked casket is displayed, and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" plays softly in the background.
Right about now is a good time to take a break and go out to chat with the low-tech volunteers, who bring the museum experience back down to earth in a way the high-tech wizardry cannot.
"None of us are really experts," says Paul Thornburgh, a Springfield resident, of his volunteer role at the museum. "But we've been to classes and have a working knowledge."
Thornburgh tells of a "credential" that few of us can claim. He describes his visits to the Lincoln Home as a boy.
"I'd throw my bike down on the front lawn and go through the home. Growing up here, you just take it for granted. Just growing up with it all around you, you just assimilated."
Another volunteer, Ann Coomie, describes Booth as "the Brad Pitt of his time, a very famous actor."
She is sympathetic to Mary Lincoln.
"She was portrayed as a not-very-nice woman. But none of us could have survived intact," she says.
"They had a very loving relationship, and he counted on her insight. She had a very keen sense of politics and circumstance. "I think people in Washington society underestimated her."
For more information: www.alplm.org; (800) 610-2094.
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