Art Detail

• Title: Laughing Lincoln
• Artist: David Alan Clark
• Location: Central Park, 104 E. Benton Ave, Naperville
• Medium: Sculpture
• Creation Date: 2018
• Installation Date: 2018
• Description: Life-size bronze sculpture of Abraham Lincoln as a young man and jovial storyteller.
• History Behind Art: Laughing Lincoln has been in the works since 2015, after the death of former Naperville City Council member and Central Park advocate Don Wehrli. In partnership with Century Walk, the Wehrli family has selected an artist to complete a cast-bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln at age 30, a time when he worked as a lawyer and Illinois state legislator. In that early role, Lincoln could have helped establish the late Wehrli's beloved Central Park as the DuPage County seat and site of the county's first courthouse. In 1839, Naperville town founder Joseph Naper, then a state legislator along with Lincoln, was pushing to create DuPage County out of nine townships in Cook County, and 30-year-old Lincoln voted against his party to help make that happen. Three years earlier, Naper had voted against his party to support Lincoln's initiative to move the state capitol from Vandalia to Springfield, so some say the votes were a negotiated swap. Thus 30-year-old Lincoln, as a smiling storyteller, soon will be installed on a perch in Central Park to stay for decades or longer.