New Lincoln museum to be highlighted on C-Span

Springfield's long awaited grand opening of the new Lincoln Museum is generating a lot of buzz. The museum features many lively and non-traditional high-tech exhibits and displays.

On Monday morning from 6 to 9 a.m, C-Span's Washington Journal will broadcast live from the museum in Springfield and feature a tour with noted presidential historian Richard Norton Smith.

Smith was a former director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential museum in West Branch, Iowa, and has since been affiliated with many other presidential museums.

From his bio on the White House web site:

Between 1987 and 2001, Mr. Smith served as Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California; the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Michigan respectively.

In December, 2001 Mr. Smith became director of the new Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. There he supervised construction of the Institute's $11.3 million permanent home and launched a Presidential Lecture Series and other high profile programs. In October, 2003 he was appointed the first Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a four building complex in Springfield, Illinois scheduled to open in 2004.

This will be an excellent chance to preview this museum and see what they've done with all the money raised for this project.