The
curator of the governor’s mansion has been tapped to go to work for the Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
David
Bourland, a former art gallery owner who became mansion curator in 1983, will
become manager of exhibits for the museum beginning July 1. He could not be
reached for comment. Bourland, 62, is not currently a state employee, but instead
works for the Illinois Executive Mansion Association, a nonprofit organization
set up to restore and preserve the mansion.
“He’s
going to be the kind of person that he has always been, which is a
jack-of-all-trades and master of many,” said Eileen Mackevich, ALPLM executive
director.
The
museum does not now have a manager of exhibits, but hiring such a person has
been on the institution’s to-do list for more than a year. Among other things,
Bourland will work with other museums to help arrange loans of artifacts for
display at the ALPLM, Mackevich said.
The
ALPLM has been rocked for more than a year by a power struggle between
Mackevich and Amy Martin, Illinois Historic Preservation Agency director. One of Mackevich’s complaints has been
that museum hires have been made without her approval. The general assembly
voted this year to make ALPLM a stand-alone institution, but Gov. Bruce Rauner,
who has said that he favors separating the institution from IHPA, has not yet
signed a bill. Mackevich acknowledged that she did not extend the job offer to
Bourland.
“I
concurred,” Mackevich said.
Mackevich
said that Nadine O’Leary, ALPLM chief of staff, suggested that Bourland be
hired. O’Leary referred questions to the governor’s office.
Bourland
became mansion curator under former Gov. Jim Thompson. He worked for former
Secretary of State George Ryan when Jim Edgar became governor in 1991 and
returned as mansion curator after Ryan was elected governor in 1998.
Bourland
acquired the Clayville Historic Site, then called the Clayville Rural Life
Center, near Pleasant Plains in the 1990s, but the property, which was once a
stagecoach stop and includes the oldest known brick building in Sangamon
County, deteriorated to the point that the Landmarks Preservation Council of
Illinois in 2007 declared it one of the state’s most endangered historic
places.
Bourland,
who acquired the site from the Sangamon State University Foundation, told the State Journal-Register in 2001 that he
rented out the site for private events on occasion and was too busy with his
curator’s job to do anything else with the property. He also said that an annual
folk art festival that had a fixture before he bought the site wasn’t cost
effective. The site was acquired from Bourland in 2010 by the Pleasant Plains
Historical Society, which formed in 2009 to purchase the property, which again
hosts art and music festivals and is open to the public during summer months.
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2015.
