Though partisan warfare has resumed after a brief truce, Washington remains aglow with the aura of a historic and inspiring president; a man who came to the White House from Illinois to guide an imperiled America through a time of crisis.

We speak, of course, of Abraham Lincoln. Thursday is the 200th anniversary of his birth, an occasion that seems to have escaped the notice of no one. The Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the American History Museum and the Library of Congress all have new Lincoln exhibits already up or starting this week. But the show that best examines the maintenance of Lincoln’s reputation for posterity is the National Gallery of Art’s “Designing the Lincoln Memorial: Daniel Chester French and Henry Bacon,” opening on Honest Abe’s birthday.