It’s been plagued with problems for years, but the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is not hanging up its hat.
Days after Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced U.S. Transportation Secretary and former Republican congressman Ray LaHood would be overseeing the board of the Springfield library and museum, the governor on Monday announced the addition of six new board members.
Former Gov. Bruce Rauner in 2017 signed an executive order making the library and museum a separate state agency. The order meant that the museum would no longer fall under the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. And while there were statutes in place regarding the museum’s board, no members were appointed during Rauner’s term.
Pritzker’s office said by statute the board must feature four public members, and one expert each in business; Lincoln’s history; Illinois history; library and museum studies; historic preservation; cultural tourism; conservation, digitization and technological innovation.
Appointees include J. Steven Beckett, a Lincoln historian and lawyer described as a “frequent lecturer on [Lincoln’s] law practices”; Jessica Harris, an administrator at Southern Illinois University; Jason Lesniewicz, the Director of Cultural Tourism at Choose Chicago; Dan Monroe, a professor at Millikin University; Melinda Spitzker-Johnston, a digital manager at Encyclopedia Britannica; and Martin Sandoval, an attorney and founding partner of Compass Associates.
The appointments must still be approved by the state Senate.
The Lincoln library has been plagued by debts, so the foundation that runs the library and museum had weighed auctioning off Lincoln artifacts to pay off the $9.7 million it owes on a 2007 loan it used to buy the Barry and Louise Taper Collection.
That collection, valued at $25 million, includes a stovepipe, beaver-fur hat Lincoln allegedly wore, priced at $6.5 million. It also included the blood-stained gloves the 16th president wore the night he was assassinated.
The authenticity of the hat and its connection to Lincoln fell under heavy scrutiny after the purchase.
The Chicago Sun-Times first raised questions about the hat’s background in 2012. The state historic panel that oversaw the museum even debated having the Illinois State Police’s forensic lab conduct DNA testing on the hat in an effort to determine if it ever sat on Lincoln’s head.
But the museum curator objected, snapping, “This is a dead issue. Dandruff, bone, hair, forget it. It’s not there.”
Emails released last week revealed that the state’s top historian could find no evidence linking the hat to Lincoln.
“It appears from my discussions with the state historian that he and his team have found no evidence confirming the hat belonged to President Lincoln,” Alan Lowe, executive director of the library and museum told a top Pritzker aide in the June 5 email.
“This does not mean that evidence does not exist, but the efforts of our team have been very thorough. We all had hoped that something definitive would be found, but thus far that is not the case,” wrote Lowe, who was later fired.
The museum has been dogged by criticism since its founding. Then-Gov. George Ryan came under fire in 2001 for trying to engineer the appointment of his chief of staff as director of the $115 million museum.
Pritzker named four other board members last week. The governor also ousted Lowe, who started at the library in Springfield at 2016. Lowe replaced Eileen Mackevich, who resigned in 2015 over differing views with Rauner on the direction of the museum.
