The bed in which Abraham Lincoln died, as seen in Lincoln Treasures.

With less than two weeks left before Lincoln Treasures closes on August 17, it’s a good time to look back at our visitors’ reactions since the exhibition opened on the Rail Splitter’s 200th birthday.

The primary audience—elementary, middle, and high school students—enjoyed some of it while often speeding through it. Many young people marveled at the death bed, only half believing that Lincoln actually died in it. Other students hurried to see the Gettysburg Address when the exhibition contained a copy of it in Lincoln’s own handwriting. My coolest moments in the exhibition were hearing younger visitors recite Lincoln’s most famous speech in unison with the exhibition’s audio.

Adult visitors enjoyed much of the same. I saw several Lincoln fans march straight to the end of the exhibition to see the death bed, satisfied that it was still here. Based on their own thorough research, our volunteer interpreters answered lots of questions about the large painting, Death of Lincoln, displayed near the bed. Many people laughed at the gigantic joke ice skate that Lincoln received in the 1840s. Others compared Mary Todd Lincoln’s White House china to the china used by Michelle Obama. Some chuckled at the photo of Lincoln with messy hair (above) and the brush and comb used on it. Many wondered why artist Roger Brown, in his 1989 work Lost America, portrayed Lincoln striding across a surreal landscape.

For the Lincoln bicentennial, thousands of visitors came to the museum to learn more about Honest Abe. Lincoln Treasures satisfied some of them. Everyone, though, should come back in October for Abraham Lincoln Transformed to see a detailed look at how the Civil War transformed Lincoln and his views about slavery and the Union.

> View a slideshow of Lincoln Treasures gallery views

> See Lincoln Treasures before it closes
> Learn more about the Lincoln Bicentennial
> Read more of Peter Alter’s Lincoln Treasures blog posts

Tags: Death bed, Death of Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, Lincoln Treasures, Lost America, Peter Alter

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Education, Exhibitions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.