After long being mired in politics, Lincoln museum has ‘potential to be incredibly great’ under restructuring plan

CHICAGO — Ever since it opened late and over budget in 2005, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield has been regularly beset by problems tied to the historically transactional nature of Illinois politics.

Former Gov. George Ryan had his name put on the cornerstone before going to prison. Likenesses of modern-day political power brokers found their way into paintings depicting Lincoln and 19th-century scenes. Indicted former House Speaker Michael Madigan pushed to set up the museum as a free-standing state agency, raising fears it would become a haven for patronage.

A measure passed this month by legislators and now headed to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk is the latest effort to rebuild trust in one of the state’s prized institutions. The bill would restructure some of the museum’s operations and further centralize fundraising and decision-making power under the museum’s executive director and a board of trustees appointed by the governor.

“I think we’ve gotten it,” Pritzker said recently at an unrelated event. “I’m very pleased about the direction.”

Trustees on the 11-member board are required to have expertise in at least one area such as Illinois history, Lincoln history, business administration, cultural tourism or historic preservation.

An independent expert said the measure could indeed solve some of the library’s problems by consolidating power with a board that would by law have a “plurality of voices” with unique qualifications.

“The intent (of the bill) is to basically add multiple voices and multiple kinds of expertise to decision-making,” said Susan Frankenberg, museum studies program coordinator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “It has the potential to be incredibly great for the museum.”

For more than a decade after it opened, the museum operated under oversight from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. Madigan, a friend of then-director Eileen Mackevich, drafted legislation in 2015 to make the museum a stand-alone agency and dissolve the Historic Preservation Agency.

It was part of a deal with Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, who in return would have gotten a privatization plan he campaigned on. But talks fizzled, neither legislative action advanced, and Mackevich ended up resigning in October 2015 over differences with the Historic Preservation Agency.

The Lincoln museum did, however, become a separate state agency through a Rauner executive order in 2017. The order, lauded for removing bureaucratic red tape hindering the museum, nested the Historic Preservation Agency under the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Troubles for the museum persisted, however, much of it revolving around a stovepipe hat.

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, which formed in 2000 with the express goal of opening and fundraising for the museum, borrowed $23 million in 2007 to buy the hat and 1,400 other Lincoln-related artifacts and documents from collector Louise Taper, who happened to sit on the foundation’s board.

Struggling to repay its loan, the foundation asked for state money, even while facing mounting questions as to whether Lincoln did, in fact, once own the hat.

In 2019, the state’s most recent historian, Sam Wheeler, issued a report that did not reach a definitive conclusion concerning the hat’s provenance, but did allege that “senior officials at (the museum) had repeatedly weaponized the stovepipe hat … as part of a power struggle” with the foundation that helped start the museum.

“In response to the provenance issues that were raised in 2012, (the museum) did not respond like a responsible museum,” Wheeler wrote in the report.

Wheeler was fired in 2020 for reasons that were never made clear. A year earlier, Pritzker fired the museum’s director after a state watchdog found he violated procedures by lending a handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address to an upstart museum affiliated with conservative pundit Glenn Beck.

Last April, the relationship between the state and the foundation was severed after the state alleged a lack of transparency around the foundation’s finances, while the foundation flung back accusations that the state was threatening and spreading misinformation.

The recently passed legislation eliminates all references to the foundation, now rebranded as the Lincoln Presidential Foundation, which had supported the museum philanthropically and served as a nonvoting member on its board.

Christina Shutt, who previously headed the Mosaic Templars Cultural Center, an African American history and culture museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, took over as the museum’s executive director last June. She said bringing fundraising capabilities solely into the institution will make the museum “more transparent and accountable.”

State Rep. Lamont Robinson, a Chicago Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the legislation puts Shutt “in the driver’s seat” to lead the agency, particularly in regard to its finances.

The foundation, which is no longer affiliated with the museum, was “completely neutral” on the legislation, said Nick Kalm, the foundation’s vice chair. The foundation recently rebranded and expanded its efforts to preserve Lincoln’s legacy nationwide, starting with a partnership with the National Park Service to help fund the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, according to a release.

An agreement with the foundation that lends the museum its prized Taper collection — which includes the stovepipe hat — expires at the end of October, upon which a new agreement will have to be reached.

Also under the recently passed legislation, the state historian will be appointed by the governor. Responsibilities previously held by the state historian, including sitting on select boards, procuring historical materials and conducting research, would instead fall to museum employees.

The legislation also requires the historian to have expertise in a diverse community group’s Illinois history — either African American, Asian American, Latinx, Native American or LGBTQ.

“This really will help us tell the story of Illinois history in a bigger way, a more broad way,” Shutt said. “It’ll help us connect with communities across the state.”

State Rep. Tim Butler, a Springfield Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said he was “literally approached by no one” with concerns about the legislation, which passed both chambers without any dissenting votes.

A museum is supposed to be a civic and social institution designed for the public to glean knowledge, not a bargaining chip in the political sphere, the U. of I.’s Frankenberg said. She said she sees the changes outlined in the bill as an effort to “avoid cronyism” and “make the museum stronger,” she said.

“I get why people are cautious and wary. We’ve seen political bad stuff happen,” Frankenberg said. “But this is attempting to clean some of that up.”