Historic City Hall Hosts “Abraham Lincoln: The Image”
The City of Lake Charles will host “Abraham Lincoln: The Image” at Historic City Hall Arts and Cultural Center. The opening reception will take place on Friday, August 2 from 5:30-8 p.m.; all ages are welcome at no charge. The exhibition will hang through October 12, 2013.
This unique exhibition offers highlights from one of the largest collections of Lincoln prints in the world and illustrates how Lincoln was viewed by people of his time and how he has been remembered since. In the time of Abraham Lincoln, engravings and lithographs of political and military leaders, and of the events that made them notable, were widely published, aggressively marketed, eagerly collected, and fondly displayed in many family parlors around the nation. Abraham Lincoln: The Image features these political cartoons, campaign broadsides, photographs, lithographs and memorials from 1857 to 1870, compiled from the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection’s (LFFC) huge collection of Lincoln prints — perhaps the largest collection of such graphics in the nation. It is traveled by the Indiana State Museum.
Visitors will be introduced to America’s 16th president, commonly referred to as one of the greatest leaders in American history through dozens of images from and following his lifetime. In an age of Twitter and digital photos immediately sent to a vast online audience, the “social media” and the making of a political image of Lincoln’s time is quite interesting.
Also on exhibit through September 7 are “Elvis: Grace and Grit” photographs of Elvis’s early years by CBS photographers, and McNeese Professor Mary Bee’s “The Dompamine Chronicles” offbeat humor to lighten the hearts of those coping with Parkinson’s disease. Historic City Hall is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Admission is free, but donations are gladly accepted. For more information, call 491-9147 or visit www.cityoflakecharles.com.
