| Lyndon Baines Johnson Library | |
| Location | Austin, Texas, USA |
|---|---|
| Dedicated | May 22, 1971 |
| Named for | Lyndon B. Johnson |
| Architect | Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill[1] |
| Size | 14 acres (57,000 m²) |
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum is one of 13 presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration. The library houses 45 million pages of historical documents, including the papers of Lyndon Baines Johnson and those of his close associates and others. The library was dedicated on May 22, 1971, with Johnson and then-President Richard Nixon in attendance. The current director is presidential historian Mark K. Updegrove.
The library, adjacent to the LBJ School of Public Affairs, occupies a 14 acre (57,000 m²) campus that is federally run and independent from The University of Texas at Austin. The top floor of the library has a 7/8ths scale replica of the Oval Office decorated as it was during Johnson's presidency. The museum provides year-round public viewing of its permanent historical and cultural exhibits and its many traveling exhibits. The library is the only presidential library not to charge admission, and has the highest visitation of any presidential library (with the exception of the first two or three years of any new presidential library, which in some cases sees more visitors).[2]
Upon her death in July 2007 Lady Bird Johnson lay in repose in the Library and Museum, just as her husband had 34 years earlier.
Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (University Press of Kansas, 2005). See ch.3: "Symbolic Power, Democratic Access, and the Imperial Presidency: The Johnson Library."
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