Experts in a knot over Abraham Lincoln's coat

WASHINGTON — The exhibit would be haunting: the bloodstained overcoat President Lincoln was wearing at Ford's Theatre the night he was assassinated, displayed under protective glass in the lobby of the renovated theater.

Visitors could view it up close. Passers-by could glimpse it from the street 24 hours a day. And the coat, its lining embroidered with the phrase "One Country, One Destiny," would be a moving symbol of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth next year.

But now some textile conservators are worried the hallowed garment might be too fragile to return to full-time display when the theater reopens in February.

Light and gravity can doom historic clothing, they say. And the Brooks Brothers coat had been on almost continuous display from the time it was acquired in 1968 until Ford's was closed for renovation last year, officials said.

"It might be that it's time to put these things away and not to exhibit them to the public if there's any hope of saving them for future generations," said Cathy Heffner, president of Textile Preservation Associates who has examined some of Lincoln's clothing.

The concern illustrates an ongoing debate over the display of national treasures: the desire to preserve items for posterity vs. the right of citizens to experience them.

"At what point do you take an artifact and ... just lock it away in a dungeon and never let anyone see it?" asked Paul Tetreault, the theater's producing director. "What value does it have if in fact the people who actually own it never get to see it?"

For now, the National Park Service and the Ford's Theatre Society said plans to display Lincoln's overcoat in the lobby and his frock coat, pants, waistcoat and tie in the new theater museum in the basement have not changed.

Lincoln was shot in the head at Ford's on April 14, 1865, by actor John Wilkes Booth. The president died the next morning in a house across the street.

The clothes are said to have been given by the widowed Mary Todd Lincoln to Alphonso Donn, a former District of Columbia police officer who served as a White House doorkeeper.

In 1924, Donn's daughter-in-law put them up for auction in Philadelphia. A mysterious well-wisher bid $6,500 and allowed her to keep them, according to the museum.

When the garments passed to Donn's granddaughter, she, too, sought to sell them. In 1968, they were purchased for $25,000 and given to the theater. The clothing went on display in the theater's basement museum.

Heffner expressed concern about plans for 24-hour-a-day display.

"That means if you're able to see the coat outside on the street," it could be exposed to excessive light, she said.

"Light damage is cumulative," she added. "There's nothing you can do to it after it happens."

In the old museum, which park officials said had no windows and was closed at night, the clothing was under artificial light.

"You don't put things like that in a lobby," said retired textile conservator Fonda Thomsen, who assessed the Lincoln garments in 1990.

"You call up any textile conservator and you ask them what they think about putting something like that in the lobby of a building, and they'll probably come unglued."

Sunae Park Evans, senior costume conservator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, said the museum's collection of dresses worn by first ladies was damaged by overexposure to light in the mid-1900s.

"Every kind of museum has this kind of debate," she said.