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Lincoln Legacy Committee asks board for funding help to refresh courthouse exhibit
Summary
The Lincoln Legacy Committee updated the Champaign County Board on an exhibit in the courthouse, outlined recent and planned activities, and requested modest funding to address audio‑visual and brochure updates.
The Lincoln Legacy Committee briefed the Champaign County Board on its courthouse exhibit and asked the board to consider modest support to refresh audio‑visual elements and materials.
"We are hoping to at least do a quick renovation of the exhibit," said Barb Olschleger Garby, a historian and member of the Lincoln Legacy Committee, who presented the committee’s work and plans to the board. The exhibit, which opened in February in the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, documents Lincoln’s legal work and local connections in Champaign County.
The committee described its prior grant work and ongoing projects. Garby said the committee secured a $121,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to produce the initial courthouse exhibit and to contract Taylor Studios for installation. The committee also noted a complementary exhibit at the Museum of the Grand Prairie and a network of nine Lincoln wayside markers around the county.
Garby outlined near‑term priorities: an AV refresh (to correct some audio and visual problems), completion of a public brochure and an online “trail” of Lincoln‑related sites, and participation in an upcoming exhibit on the Underground Railroad at the Urbana Free Library in early 2026. She warned that the federal grant program that previously funded the exhibit has been reduced, saying, "the Institute of Museum and Library Services... has been stripped of its funding at the moment," and the committee will therefore seek private donations and alternative grants for any major renovation.
County Board liaison Eric Thorsland thanked the committee for their work and praised its members. "Barb is a wealth of knowledge," Thorsland said, and noted that much of the committee’s fundraising has come from private donors and grants rather than county general funds.
No board vote followed the presentation. Committee members said they will return with proposals and costs if they identify specific funding needs.
