Clinton library to open with fanfare this week
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LITTLE ROCK - Suppose you just happened to have 80 million pages of
paper, 2 million photographs, 20,000 videotapes and 77,000 gewgaws and
knickknacks. What would you do with them?
Well, if you were Bill Clinton, you'd haul them all to Little Rock,
hire an award-winning New York architect to design a $165 million home
for them and then open it to scholars and the public after a four-day
party starting today.
The William J. Clinton Presidential Center, a gleaming,
148,000-square-foot glass-and-steel box, opens Thursday amid fanfare
that includes a concert by Aretha Franklin, Clinton's favorite singer.
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All the living former presidents are slated to attend, as well as a
host of celebrities, among them Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand and Bono.
And there will be glitzy parties all over town, including one said to
be planned at the condo of actors Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson.
The library, repository of the largest collection of presidential
material in the United States, includes the saxophone Clinton played on
The Arsenio Hall Show, and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office,
complete with a pot of ivy that sat on the mantel when Clinton was
there.
Yes, the library contains documents involving Clinton's impeachment,
Ken Starr's investigation and the Monica Lewinsky affair, library
Director David Alsobrook said. But, no, the infamous stained blue dress
will not be on display. The archive doesn't have it.
The building is breathtaking. It cantilevers 90 feet to the banks of
the Arkansas River and seems to float there, an intentional bow to
Clinton's mantra of "building a bridge to the 21st century." More than
150,000 pounds of glass offer sweeping vistas of the city and flood the
interior with light.
The building won a National Design Award last month.
But, said library foundation President Skip Rutherford, "I don't
believe the theory (that) if you build it they will come. You have to
offer them something."
And the foundation has. The museum features a 110-foot interactive time
line of the Clinton presidential years, plus permanent exhibits that
use documents, photos and videos to showcase Clinton's life in the
White House.
The complex, surrounded by a 27-acre park where derelict train tracks
and abandoned warehouses once stood, is "the first 'green' presidential
library in the country," Rutherford said. It has 306 solar panels, 10
miles of underground radiant heating and so many other conservation
features that it uses 34 percent less energy than a normal building its
size.
Across a landscaped "scholar's garden" linked to wireless Internet is
the elaborate 1899 red-brick Choctaw Line railroad station, transformed
by $4 million into the Clinton School of Public Service. Clinton, who
has an office on the second floor, is expected to be a guest lecturer.
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