HEMINGWAY ON THEMOVE
Oak Park museum closes doors, but only to build new facility behind writer’s birth home
Oak Park tourists now have one less place to visit.
The Ernest Hemingway Museum, just a short walk from the home where the author was born, closed its doors Sunday — but the Village of Oak Park won’t be losing any of its Hemingway history.
The museum is moving out of space it rents on Oak Park Avenue in favor of building its own facility behind the Hemingway birth home, a couple of blocks to the north.
“We have plans already drawn up,” said John Berry, chairman of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park. “We’re not going to lose the content of the museum, we’re just changing the format a little bit.”
Berry said the foundation has long planned to improve and update the facilities that house Hemingway’s legacy.
The museum opened 27 years ago and has been the first stop on a 90- minute tour that leads visitors to the Hemingway birthplace home on Oak Park Avenue. But for nearly 20 of those years, the foundation has had a different vision — closing the museum to make way for a new research and writing center on the birthplace property.
Hemingway family members had suggested creating an education center — and the idea stuck. The foundation drew up plans for a research and writing center thatwould provide a learning space, educational resources, room for a bookstore and a venue for receptions, behind the Hemingway home. It will replace a garage.
“Instead of having two locations a couple of blocks apart, it would all sit on the same piece of land,” Berry said.
The foundation has been paying about $ 25,000 a year to rent most of the first floor of the current building, a former church, Berry said. That money will now go toward other expenses and maintenance at the birth home.
With a capital campaign launching soon, the foundation wants to raise $ 1.3 million to have the new center up and running in the next few years.
“We’ve been mulling that over all these years, and now it’s really time for us to do something,” Berry said.
The new space, much smaller than the current museum, won’t hold all the artifacts.
“We’ll certainly preserve as much material as we can, but we won’t be able to accommodate as much as in the current space,” said Berry. “But almost everything will still be viewable someplace.”
Plans are in the works to move original movie posters from Hemingway- inspired films to the special collections department of the Oak Park Library. Other items will be put on display at the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest, while a large circular exhibit that shows amap of Hemingway’s life may find a new home at Oak Park- River Forest High School.
Board member Chris Turner is working on a major update for the foundation’s website that will go live this fallm and plans are in the works to digitize photos to be displayed in a video format.
The foundation expects a fundraiser for the new center to launch by the winter. In the meantime, the birth home, built in 1890 by Hemingway’s grandfather, will remain open to visitors.
“INSTEAD OF HAVING TWO LOCATIONS A COUPLE OF BLOCKS APART, ITWOULD ALL SIT ON THE SAME PIECE OF LAND.” JOHN BERRY, chairman of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park