Grand Opening of the new Lincoln Heritage Museum, Fall of 2013!

In 2008 Lincoln College broke ground for the Lincoln Center—a new multi-faceted facility featuring a state-of-the-art museum, a physical fitness and health center, a spacious gymnasium, and a multi-media classroom and office space. The center opened in 2010, with the new museum being the final phase of the building project.

Lincoln College hired Taylor Studios from Rantoul, Illinois to design and fabricate the museum. The design phase began in 2011, and the build is to commence in 2012, with the opening in Fall of 2013.

The new museum will be on two floors, with approximately 4,000 square feet of exhibit space. That is approximately four times the space of our current facility. The heart of the new museum’s storyline will be the Illinois story. Our artifacts will remain front and center to telling the Lincoln story, but our new museum will feature more visual and interactive exhibits to draw the visitor in as much as possible. We will create an experience that projects the visitor into the life and times of Lincoln, probes questions, and promotes further learning. Another key component of our new museum will be the heavy integration of living history. We will reserve space in several galleries, showcasing Lincoln at different periods in his life, for small audiences to “witness history” from these actors.

We have begun the important and exciting design phase of the process, and we anticipate opening of the new museum to be in the Fall of 2013. For the aforementioned reasons, we envision this to be a museum which visitors will come back to time and again! Please come back to this site to follow the progress of this exciting new venture.