The New Gettysburg Museum and Visitor Center
The Gettysburg Foundation announced today that it has secured more than $93 million in funding toward its Campaign to Preserve Gettysburg.
At the same time, it revised its fundraising goal to $125 million, which includes funds to build, furnish and operate the new Museum and Visitor Center at Gettysburg National Military Park, to preserve the park’s extensive collection of Civil War artifacts and archives, including the massive Cyclorama painting, to return portions of the battlefield to their 1863 appearance, and to create an endowment to support future preservation and maintenance needs. The goal also includes additional preservation projects previously handled by the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg. The Friends merged last summer with the Gettysburg National Battlefield Museum Foundation to form the Gettysburg Foundation.
Construction of the new Museum and Visitor Center remains on schedule for a spring 2008 opening, Foundation President Robert C. Wilburn said. Within the last few weeks, workers put in place the cupola atop the Cyclorama gallery. The circular structure in the center of the new facility will be the first to be completed, to accommodate the ongoing conservation of the 365-foot painting. The next phase of that project will take place in the new gallery; the conservation team anticipates moving the painting into its new home later this spring.
“It is difficult to describe the sense of anticipation we feel as these new facilities take shape,” Wilburn said. “I am often asked to describe the new Gettysburg experience, in the context of what visitors encounter today. The short answer is that there is no comparison.
“From the start,” Wilburn said, “we have worked to ensure that the Gettysburg experience reaches its full potential. Our goal has been to showcase the battlefield and the town, and to offer an experience that not only excites and inspires visitors, but also helps them appreciate the significance of what happened here. As one of our nation’s most sacred places, Gettysburg deserves nothing less.”
Additional investment in the museum exhibit galleries, along with the Foundation’s commitment to an environmentally sustainable facility and site, account for a significant portion of the increase in the campaign goal. Costs to conserve the Gettysburg Cyclorama painting and to rehabilitate portions of the battlefield also have grown as experts handling those two projects have gained a greater understanding of how best to accomplish them. The thread that ties all of these decisions together, Wilburn notes, is the ongoing commitment on the part of the Foundation and the National Park Service to provide the best possible experience for current and future generations of Gettysburg visitors.
