[3] Original artifacts are changed from time to time, but the collection usually includes items such as the original hand written Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation, his glasses and shaving mirror, Mary Todd Lincoln's music box, items from her White House china, her wedding dress, and more.

[6][7] As of February 2014[update], a collection of Annie Leibovitz's photography, including photos of Lincoln's items, is on display.

[16] Burbank, California-based BRC Imagination Arts, led by Bob Rogers,[17] was responsible for all of the permanent exhibits and presentations, music, theaters, lifelike figures and full-immersion historical settings.

He served as director of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Texas, before accepting his position at the ALPLM.

[27] Lowe was fired in September 2019 for improperly loaning out ALPLM's original copy of the Gettysburg Address to Glenn Beck's non-profit group Mercury One.

Ryan also organized a program in which Illinois schoolchildren collected pennies for the construction of the presidential library, which raised $47,000.

The entrance of each building features a rotunda, reflective of the dome on the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Lincoln served four terms as a legislator.

[32] Southern Illinois University Carbondale historian John Y. Simon has said the museum's approach, which borrows presentation technologies from entertainment, trivializes the subject matter.

John R. Decker wrote in the Journal of American History: Like any other modern collection [the Lincoln Presidential Museum] has an audience base that extends far beyond specialists and academics.

[34] The scholarship behind the content and design for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum was a collaboration between international exhibit designers, BRC Imagination Arts, the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA), and a content team assembled by State Historian Thomas H. Schwartz.

This content team included the world's leading Lincoln scholars, Pulitzer Prize winning historians, and Illinois school teachers representing the fourth, seventh and eleventh grades.

A key goal of this collective was that exhibits promote a greater level of personal interest in Abraham Lincoln.

[citation needed] Overall sales in the gift shop hit $1 million within three months of the museum's opening to the public.

[36] Questions have been raised over the provenance of a stovepipe hat in the museum's collection said to have been worn by Lincoln and valued at $6.5 million.

In 2019, the library director was fired after he sent a copy of the Gettysburg Address written by Lincoln himself to Texas for an exhibit by political commentator Glenn Beck without prior clearance.