Rate This Museum Your guide for museum reviews

As part of our masters program we visited this museum and were asked to evaluate it both as scholars and as visitors. To compare the scholarship versus showmanship that this museum and museum professionals everywhere will agree is the ultimate debate. While many would argue that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum is too "Disney-esque" and striving too hard to keep up in a field it shouldn't be competing in to begin with, I would argue that whether we like it or not we are indeed competing for the same crowds, for peoples vacation time and weekends and while many of these people are looking to be educated, they are inevitably looking to be entertained. The Lincoln Presidential Museum succeeds in both the education and entertainment fields. It evokes your emotions through each of your senses- the oven is warm in the White House kitchen, the music and voices inspire both tears and joy throughout the exhibit. It informs and intrigues its visitors from beginning to end. I would however take one star off for the lack of historical artifacts. For those of us who enjoy the feeling we would get if we were standing in front of a tophat worn by our 16th president, we are left instead with a comparitively small "Treasures" gallery of artifacts and bits of them throughout.