LEHIGH VALLEY HERITAGE MUSEUM TO OPEN NATIONAL LINCOLN EXHIBIT PRESIDENTS DAY FEBRUARY 19, 2007
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press ConferenceContact: Joseph Garrera, Executive Director
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610-435-1074, ext. 19
The Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum has scheduled an important press conference for February 19, 2007 at 10:30 a.m., just prior to the noon opening of its National Lincoln Exhibit, Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America, on “Presidents Day.”
Those participating in the press conference include Dr. Edward Steers, the leading authority on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln; Gloria Swift of the National Park Service and Curator of Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site in Washington, D.C.; and Joseph Garrera, President of The Abraham Lincoln Group of New York and Executive Director of the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown. Members of the media will be authorized to film and photograph rare Lincoln artifacts along with the entire exhibit. Jill Youngken, Curator of the exhibit, will provide a behind the scenes tour for media and news outlets as part of the press conference.
The opening ceremony scheduled for noon on “Presidents Day” is expected to draw a capacity crowd to the new Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum, which has devoted nearly 10,000 square feet to its new Lincoln exhibit. Garrera views the size and high profile nature of the exhibit as an important test case of Lincoln’s national popularity with the American people. “With the federal Lincoln Bicentennial Commission preparing a world-class celebration to mark the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth in 2009, we’re out in front on a national level with the largest Lincoln exhibit ever to be held in the Mid-Atlantic region,” said Garrera.
Key artifacts in the exhibit are on loan from the Lincoln College Museum in Lincoln, Illinois. They include a rare authentic life-size campaign banner from the election of 1860, the ballot box which Lincoln voted in during the election of 1860, Mary Lincoln’s mourning veil, a rocking chair that belonged to Abraham Lincoln’s young son Tad, and a fragment of the dress worn by actress Laura Keene who was playing the starring role on stage at Ford’s Theatre the night Lincoln was assassinated. The fragment of Keene’s dress is stained with President Lincoln’s blood. The exhibit also contains a Victorian clock that was in Ford’s Theatre on the night of Lincoln’s assassination. The Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois also provided Lincoln’s original lapdesk that he carried in his saddlebags as a lawyer on the Illinois prairie.
The exhibit greets visitors in the Linny and Beall Fowler Grand Atrium of the Museum where nationally acclaimed Lincoln Artist Wendy Allen of Connecticut will display more than 20 of her most prominent Lincoln portraits. Allen describes it as the largest Lincoln portrait exhibit of her 25 year career as a professional artist.
The Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum is located at 432 W. Walnut Street in Allentown, PA. Further information can be obtained by visiting
http://www.lchs.museum, or by calling Executive Director Joseph Garrera at 610-435-1074.
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