The Abe Experience, Part I

Last week I took my beloved to Springfield to see the brand new Abraham Lincoln Museum. At over 40,000 square feet and loaded with twenty-first century technology, it's not so much a museum as it is a "museum experience." I read a lot about it when it first opened last year and knew it would be a real trip. Instructed by Debbie to "blog the hell out of that thing," I came armed with my digital camera only to discover that photography is prohibited in all but two places: the giant open foyer (where I encountered Abe) and "Mrs. Lincoln's Attic," a playroom where you bring the kids to blow off steam after they've been either bored to tears by exhibits or scared to death by the lighting effects and battle sounds in the films.

Fortunately I have inherited my dad's ability to completely ignore the rules when it comes to prohibited photography. On guided tours to places like Jefferson's Monticello, my cagey dad would hang back while the guide led the rest of the group into the next room, then he'd snap away. I don't remember him ever getting busted. Because my beloved and I weren't on a guided tour, my photographic strategy involved two moves: (1) check to be sure museum staff isn't around, then (2) walk right up and photograph whatever you want while acting as if you own the place. Confidence is a must.

The museum definitely privileges the slavery story; Lincoln the Emancipator figures more prominently than does Lincoln Savior of the Union. Rhetoric does pretty well for itself, too. The Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address each get their own room, complete with giant reproductions of the texts; in the case of the Emancipation Proclamation, they even toss in a few floating holographic heads for good measure. We loved an exhibit that featured brutal cartoons and criticisms of Lincoln, and didn’t even mind the cheesy “Campaign 1860” faux-television coverage in which Tim Russert calls the four-way race for president.                  In the battle between words and images, however, it is the image of Lincoln that comes out on top. Visual representations of Lincoln are everywhere, from waxy statues to photographs to holographic ghosts. Most interesting of all, a “multimedia experience” called “Lincoln’s Eyes” actually instructs the audience in physiognomy, or how to “read” Lincoln’s face. Lincoln’s face, the narrator tells us, contains within it the full spectrum of comedy and tragedy that Lincoln encountered in his life; studying it closely thus tells us something about Lincoln’s character. Strikingly, this is exactly how people wrote and talked about Lincoln’s face more than 100 years ago. The pseudo-science of physiognomy was incredibly popular in the 19^th century because it suggested that mere appearance could reveal something about character—the length of your nose or the shape of your brow supposedly revealed what kind of person you were. Lincoln was a hugely popular subject for practitioners of physiognomy in the late 19^th century; in fact, a chapter in my next book discusses how people in the 1890s used physiognomic studies of Lincoln to make arguments about what constituted “American” identity. Apparently physiognomy is alive and well in the 21^st century, too.

So is crass consumerism. I'll talk about that in Part 2!

Comments

[KWT]

Judging by the "head-on-a-stick" laying on your desk, when you say, "crass consumerism," you're not just whistling Dixie.

[caraf]

Indeed! I'll be posting about the gift shop part of the adventure later. And believe me, it was an adventure. That head on a stick is SO going to come in handy!

[Lu]

Jan has taught you the art of the photographic finger point very well, indeed!