ALPLM adrift
Consultant rejects Madigan plan
MUSEUMS | Bruce Rushton
What do you get if you promise to raise money to build a museum but don’t deliver, then borrow millions of dollars to buy artifacts of questionable authenticity once the museum opens and then falter at fundraising to repay the loan?
If you’re the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation, you win a recommendation to run a cashstrapped, dated museum along with a suggestion that taxpayers make good on the loan you’ve struggled to repay.
That’s the long-term plan suggested by a consultant tasked with solving the governance riddle that has plagued the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum since last spring, when House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, proposed divorcing the institution from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and making it a stand-alone agency with its own board of directors.
In his report, Brent D. Glass, former director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, rejects Madigan’s plan while noting that the ALPLM now is in the hands of state employees with no experience running museums and that the institution is being overseen by a historic preservation agency headed by a woman with no experience in historic preservation. Furthermore, Glass found, the library lacks money to make necessary investments in technology while the museum’s exhibits need “major reinvestment in order to regain and maintain their reputation of excellence.”
It is, in short, an institution where the library and museum operate independently without the professional staff necessary to adopt best practices and gain accreditation, Glass found.
“(T)here is no requirement that places specialists in historical content, museum or library management in any senior leadership positions,” Glass wrote. “The scarcity of qualified professionals in the leadership structure reinforces the difficulty in building a strong, professional museum and research library culture at ALPLM.”
The Glass report was unanimously endorsed last month by an ad hoc group tasked with coming up with governance recommendations. The group includes members of the foundation board, the IHPA board, members of an advisory board to the institution and three heads of museum and library organizations not affiliated with the ALPLM.
Glass says that Madigan’s proposal would not solve budget problems at the ALPLM and a stand-alone institution might give short shrift to the state historical library, which contains materials not connected to Lincoln, that is now housed at the institution. Furthermore, Glass found, the IHPA has historic sites and memorials connected to Lincoln that lead to collaborations with the institution that would be threatened if the ALPLM became a standalone agency.
“In general, separation of the ALPLM from IHPA would result in a significant lost opportunity for the state,” Glass wrote. “It would sacrifice significant economies and synergies that the two organizations could achieve by working as an integrated unit.”
In the short term, Glass recommended dissolving the institution’s advisory board and adding at least four more people to the IHPA’s seven-member board of trustees. New appointees, Glass suggested, could come from all four legislative caucuses and could also include a member of the Supreme Court. Long term, Glass wrote, day-to-day operations of the ALPLM should be turned over to the institution’s nonprofit foundation, with the state keeping title to all real estate and inventory while also providing funding for operations. That could occur within a decade,
Glass wrote, and the state could help by appropriating money to help retire a debt of nearly $12 million that remains from the foundation’s 2007 acquisition of the so-called Taper Collection for more than $20 million.
Retiring the debt has taken longer than the foundation envisioned. Included in the Taper Collection is a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe that has no connection with Lincoln and a stovepipe hat that purportedly, but not provably, belonged to the Great Emancipator. The purchase was consummated after an appraiser questioned the authenticity of the hat as well as a clock said to have once been in Lincoln’s law office and a fan that Mary Todd Lincoln reportedly carried with her to Ford’s Theater. Until the debt is paid, all the items in the collection are collateral for the acquisition loan.
Formed in 2000, five years before the institution opened, the foundation was originally envisioned as a source of construction money, but that didn’t happen. Early on, ALPLM boosters saw the foundation as a major source of operating revenue, but that hasn’t happened, either.
Glass’ recommendation that the foundation manage the museum stands in contrast to a 2010 recommendation from the American Association of Museums (now called the American Alliance of Museums), which found murky lines of authority and recommended that the foundation’s mission statement be tweaked to reflect its role as an entity that supports, not runs, the institution.
Whether the Glass report will make any difference isn’t clear. He interviewed nearly 40 people, including Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Springfield, and three state representatives, but House Speaker Madigan isn’t on the list. In an interview, Glass said he contacted the speaker’s office.
“I wasn’t encouraged to follow up,” Glass said.
Steve Brown, Madigan spokesman, said that the push to turn the ALPLM into a stand-alone agency will continue.
“The basic conclusion is obvious: It’s a dysfunctional organization,” Brown said. “I’m not really sure it (the report) really changes the notion that the museum and library would be a much better entity if it were made its own agency.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].
