The Tsar and the President
Opening Ceremony Video

Wisconsin Public Radio -
Conversations with Larry Meiller
The Tsar and the President
Discussion with A-RCCF guest curator,
Marilyn Swezey, and
UW-Madison Russian
historian, David McDonald

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The Tsar and the President Exhibition
Catalog Click here to purchase

The year is 1861…

Abraham Lincoln has just been inaugurated as the 16th President of the United States. Fort Sumter has been bombarded and surrendered to Confederate forces. …and the stage has been set for a war that will tear the nation in two.

Meanwhile, half a world away, the Manifesto liberating 20 million serfs is being promulgated in Russia. The leader behind one of the greatest legislative acts in that country’s history: Tsar Alexander II, a man whose liberating reform would soon be mirrored by President Abraham Lincoln in the United States.

Almost 150 years later, a new traveling exhibition, The Tsar and the President, documents the parallel lives and diplomatic ties of President Abraham Lincoln and Russian Tsar Alexander II.

Come experience the story of two men who never met, yet worked together to change the world.

The Oshkosh Public Museum invites you to walk through each leader’s early years, path to office, vow to liberate and tragic assassination.

Separated by upbringing, class, rise to power and half a world, but united by a shared vision and conviction for equality, experience the lives of Abraham Lincoln and Alexander II in a story of the Civil War you’ve never heard.

“The exhibit … is, indeed, a revelation, not only for a better understanding of their
[Lincoln and Alexander II] times, but of our own.”
Professor James M. McPherson, Civil War Historian

The Tsar and the President has been organized by the American-Russian Cultural Cooperation Foundation, Washington D.C. Lenders include the United States Library of Congress, the National Park Service, the State Historical Museum, Moscow; the State Museum-Preserve “Tsarskoye Selo,” St. Petersburg; and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Moscow. The Tsar and the President is supported in part by a Community Impact Grant from the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation and major support from the Alberta S. Kimball Foundation. Additional sponsors include Donald M. Kendall, Access Industries, Inc., The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund, J.E. Robert Companies, The Trust for Mutual Understanding, Teresa & H. John, Heinz III Charitable Fund and McLarty Companies.