Animatronic LBJ

Animatronic LBJ being reprogrammed

Oct 08, 2012

by Ken Herman

[originally published in the Austin American Statesman on October 8, 2012]

As you know, the LBJ Library and Museum is closed for a major overhaul, scheduled to reopen in December in conjunction with what would have been Lady Bird Johnson’s 100^th birthday. Many of us eagerly await the new exhibits. But I’m a bit apprehensive about one.

It had somehow escaped my attention until the dinner that one of my favorite things at the museum is being messed with. As a policy, I don’t like when my favorite things are messed with.

I speak here of Animatronic LBJ, the mechanical, talking, gesturing version of our 36^th President that used to stand at a split-log fence on the museum’s fourth floor, clad in ranch garb and clutching a coiled rope in his right hand. read more