Hell of a way to start my morning. This is just depressing.
These people can raise millions for legal defense funds for Republican criminals but only $10,000 to preserve Lincoln memorabilia? I guess the word is out that Lincoln was a RINO.
Ironically, the Lincolnalia will likely be bought by Russian oligarchs laundering their money.
I think providing a link to the website may help. Here it is.
I’m one step closer to having what I need to clone my army of Lincolns to storm the White House and purge the orange menace!!!
No kidding. I just wish I had a hundred bucks to send them. I had occasion to request something from the Library a while back, and they weren’t able to provide a researcher to even email me a copy of a well-known image. Given the continuing interest in Lincoln, I simply find it amazing that this disgrace has come about.
Butler called turning to the state budget a “last step” after the foundation has “exhausted every avenue.”
Unfortunately, sir, they have exhausted every metaphorical avenue, and since you people refuse to fund infrastructure, you’ve put them into competition with literal exhausted avenues, roads, and bridges.
“Lincoln is an economic engine. He always has been.”
CEO Knorowski has her eye on the ball, that’s for sure.
these items belong to the nation. they should be donated to the smithsonian. I’m sorry for the musuem, and the surrounding businesses that are supported by the stuff, but they need to either close, and distribute the items to non - profit museums, or sell their building and land and give naming rights to the kochs or whatever other republican wants to buy it up. don’t let these items disappear into some man’s collection.
President Trump, from his huge wealth - into the billions!, will settle this 9.7 million dollar debt. His resources are so vast he won’t even notice it.
This is nuts, and sad, at the same time. If you sell off the very artifacts that would bring people into your museum in the first place, then what the hell are you left with? This is insane.
Also, it seems hard to believe that there’s not enough interest in Lincoln to bring people in to this museum or scare up online donations. Anyone else incredulous about this?
I could envision Trump using his campaign funds to buy Lincoln’s stovepipe hat for himself. He could wear it at the big military parade being held in his honor. He’d also probably have MAGA embroidered in gold on the front.
My thoughts exactly.
“… the blood-stained kid gloves are the crown jewels…”
Johnnie Cochran: “If you give a whit, you must commit.”
The Smithsonian has a large Lincoln collection already (including a hat with better provenance than this one). But this is the result of the State of Illinois cutting and cutting and cutting the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (under both Ds and Rs) so that they’ve been running with about 30% of the staff they need for the last 10 years or so. Under Bruce Rauner, he cut the budget so much and put on even more pressure so that during the budget impasse they had to close the Illinois State Museum – which managed to stay open through two world wars – as part of Rauner’s effort to bust unions via the budget and make Illinoisians blame Democrats for the budget impasse by taking away things they love like museums and (this is the kicker!) IT COST MORE TO CLOSE THE MUSEUM THAN IT WOULD HAVE COST TO KEEP IT OPEN. Rauner’s office has been a war on Illinois state history resources, full stop. He complained about patronage hiring in the director position (true, but that’s where directors come from), so he fired the director, put in his own people, and had them fire most of the professional staff and replace them with incompetent patronage hires. This is why Illinois didn’t celebrate the sesquicentennial of the Civil War or of Lincoln’s death almost at all, and has completely botched its 200th anniversary of the state’s founding this year – there have been basically zero events, publicity, or even fact sheets for schools, because there is hardly any professional staff left and management is all patronage hires who don’t give two shits.
The Tapir Collection is a slightly different beast, as the ALPLM Foundation (which is a private foundation that supports the tax-funded public museum that is run by the state, including by purchasing artifacts) is a group of wealthy(ish), politically-connected Illinoisians on a prestige board; the purchase of the collection was from a political friend of many of the board members, possibly at a too-high price. But they took on this enormous purchase via loan with no prior experience with such large purchases and no real plan to pay it back. The staff at the state historic preservation agency who were attempting to help them sort it out were all let go in the purge.
Billionaire Republican governor Bruce Rauner could pay off the debt with pocket change, but he has been on a mission to destroy Illinois historical and cultural holdings and won’t. Billionaire Democratic gubernatorial candidate JB Pritzker could too, and who knows, maybe he will. But in either case the foundation probably needs to be dissolved and reconstituted. And Illinois needs to return funding to state historic and cultural resources, in a big way – not just to save the Lincoln Museum or the State Museum or many memorials around the state or cultural projects for the citizens, but even simply to do things like the archaeological surveys required before laying state-funded roads or handle Native American artifacts appropriately under federal law. I mean we’re at the point where all of Illinois is just going to have to cease all activities that involved DIGGING anywhere (like building or paving or farming) because we’re not funding the legally-required specialists to handle surprise dead bodies or important artifacts.
“I had occasion to request something from the Library a while back, and they weren’t able to provide a researcher to even email me a copy of a well-known image.”
Yeah, I mean, there are like 3 staff people where there should be around 15. It’s bad.
Donated now. Thank you for the link!
The Taper collection was in private hands until about ten years ago, when it was sold to the Lincoln archives and museum for $23 million (plus a $2 million donation). The collector, Louise Taper, sat on the foundation’s board at the time. Some of the items, e.g. the hat in question, have shaky provenance. Somehow the museum bought some non-Lincoln items from her too, like the Marilyn Monroe stuff that was recently sold.
The whole thing sounds like a sweetheart deal gone wrong when other donors, like the heavily courted Pritzker Foundation, didn’t want to keep playing.
Nah, the Museum went on a buying spree - and it looks like they made the mistake of not realizing that the person they were buying the collection from was also the logical person to finance their purchase.
Wow, thanks for that. What a fucked up mess.
this happens once in a while with museums - especially smaller ones. can we just sell both bush’s “libraries” to the republicans and buy the gloves and hat back for the smithsonian?