Abraham Lincoln’s birthday is this Sunday, and what do you give the man who has everything, including legal tender emblazoned with his likeness and a colossal seated statue that makes him look like a god? Over at the new Ford’s Theatre Center for Education and Leadership in Washington D.C., Lincoln is receiving a three-story “tower of books,” the famously voracious reader’s personal Column of Trajan, if you will. The sculpture represents the over 15,000 titles written about the former president. Visitors of the new education and leadership center can ascend a spiraling ramp and marvel at the copious literature that has spawned from the celebrated American leader. The experience appears not dissimilar from that of the Maurizio Cattelan show in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim rotunda, though decidedly less tongue-and-cheek. Now, if only the sculpture doubled as a three-story birthday cake.

[Photos via MSNBC and MyModernMet]

by Kelly Chan

posted in news

tagged books, Column, Lincoln, President, sculpture, tower, Washington D.C.

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