Philadelphia Museum Aims To Disperse Holding For 3 Years
Stating that the board “fully intends to build a Civil War Museum in Philadelphia,” she included an Executive Summary of an “interim plan” for three years during which the museum’s entire collection would be distributed to three different organizations. Doing this “will allow the Board to redefine its strategy … in pursuing the goal of building a new Civil War Museum in Philadelphia.” Smith said stewardship agreements will be negotiated with the Gettysburg Foundation which operates the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center, the African American Museum of Philadelphia and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia “to provide for the storage and exhibition of the collection over the next three years.” As reported in the June edition of Civil War News, Governor Edward G. Rendell determined to withhold funds allocated for the development and building of a new museum. These funds, incorporated into the state’s Redevelopment Capital Fund, were initially committed as a part of a 2001 lawsuit brought by the Attorney General and others in an effort to retain the collection in Philadelphia. In an Oct. 8 interview Smith said the original lawsuit “set things up so that every political, philanthropic and community major funding source refused to make significant commitments of financial support until the state funding was secured.” Without the necessary state funding, no other significant funding became available. The museum’s history dates to 1888 when Civil War veterans residing in Philadelphia charted a corporation with the purpose of “the formation of a museum of implements, relics, and monuments of war and the erection and maintenance of a building for lectures and meetings.” Under the auspices of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) the museum continued to be the recipient of thousands of relics, artifacts, weapons, documents and books from surviving veterans as well as their families and estates. Eventually, the collection became singular in its content of historically significant remembrances of the War of the Rebellion. In 1922, MOLLUS officers purchased a permanent home for the museum at 1805 Pine St. in center city Philadelphia. However, over the years this building experienced significant deterioration and required extensive renovations. Additionally, it lacked proper temperature and humidity controls, had no educational or research facilities, was not handicapped accessible, and had only a single meeting room that also displayed the museum’s extensive collection of Lincoln memorabilia. Rather than attempt to rehabilitate the old building, in 2003 the museum’s new Board of Governors sold the historic building and agreed to a five-year lease while funding was sought for a new museum. Upon the expiration of the lease, the museum was forced to close in October 2008 and place its collection in a secure storage facility. The museum held 3,000 artifacts, thousands of photographs, a 7,000-volume library, hundreds of art works and nearly 100 linear feet of letters, diaries, muster rolls and the like. Smith’s recent Executive Summary stipulates that, pending new stewardship agreements, the majority of the museum’s collection will be transferred to the Gettysburg National Military Park Visitor Center, which includes a “state-of-the-art” storage facility, for three years. The collection will be overseen by National Park Service curatorial staff and “items from the collection will be exhibited selectively in the permanent exhibits and special exhibit galleries.” The African American Museum of Philadelphia will care for and exhibit those parts of the collection relevant to its mission and the history of African Americans during the period of the war. The museum will also enter into a collaborative agreement with the National Constitution Center to exhibit significant portions of the collection in connection with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. This exhibit may also be designed as a traveling display to be seen around the country “on a national travel schedule.” Smith is very optimist that the museum board in the next three years will develop a new plan, acquire significant private funding, continue to seek the release of committed state funds, and find a Philadelphia location in which to permanently house the museum’s collection. She said the three years “will give the Civil War Museum’s Board of Governors the opportunity to develop a new approach to achieving the goal of building a new Civil War Museum in Philadelphia by 2014.”
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