Arts & Entertainment
Lincoln Exhibit Coming to Grayslake Heritage Center
Grayslake residents will have the opportunity to learn about Abraham Lincoln's life and accomplishments through a national exhibit coming to the Grayslake Heritage Center.
A world-class traveling exhibit featuring the life and times of the 16th president will be on display at the next spring.
Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made in America is a thumbnail sketch of Lincoln's boyhood and early adult years to his very last days. It features a large variety of photographs and artifacts from the surveying instruments he used, to personal items, childhood toys, even the kid gloves he wore on that fateful night at Ford's theater.
The exhibit was created by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield to commemorate the 200th anniversary of his birth.
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"We are so thrilled to be able to bring this to Grayslake," said Heritage Center Executive Director Dave Oberg. This is the first major traveling exhibit the Heritage Center has had. Grayslake will be one of only 11 museums and institutions in the nation to host this exhibit.
Oberg said Self-Made in America is a great opportunity to tie Grayslake to the late President. "This part of Illinois was very behind Lincoln in 1860 when he ran for president. This will also really showcase Grayslake's history," Oberg said.
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Last year the sent issues of the Grayslake Times newspaper from the World War II era to the Library and Museum to be microfilmed.
Select artifacts in the exhibit are reproduced from the originals in the exclusive Louise and Barry Taper Collection – now part of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum’s holdings. Keeping these original artifacts as part of the collection of the Presidential Library and Museum has inspired a national fundraising effort entitled the Permanent Home Campaign, launched to make these historic treasures, and 1,500 other items all valued at more than $25 million, permanently available at the Presidential Library and Museum.
To date community sponsors in Grayslake have donated more than $12,000 to bring these artifacts to town and to aid in the preservation and restoration of the originals. "Grayslake is such a generous town and to see that we have this much support for this exhibit nine months before it is to come here is just amazing," Oberg said.
Additional sponsorship opportunities are available by contacting Dave Oberg at 847-543-1745 or doberg@villageofgrayslake.com.
The show will run March 16-June 2, 2013 at the Grayslake Heritage Center, 164 Hawley Street.
