The Obama Presidential Center: A New Civic Landmark in Chicago

Words by Eric David

Chicago, USA

When Barack Obama took office in 2009 as the first Black president of the United States, he broke a precedent that had stood for more than two centuries. It follows a certain logic, then, that the institution created to carry his legacy should also depart from convention. Traditional presidential libraries have tended to look backwards, preserving and enshrining a particular administration through what is often described as a ‘treasure box’ approach. Opening to the public on 19 June 2026 within Chicago’s Jackson Park, the Obama Presidential Center takes a different path. Part museum, part cultural institution, part community hub, the 19.3-acre campus is designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects with landscape architects Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates as a forward-looking civic space that treats history as a catalyst for action, placing the story of Barack and Michelle Obama within a broader narrative of democracy, civic participation and social change.

Three principal buildings, the Museum, the Forum and a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, gather around John Lewis Plaza, a civic forecourt named after the late civil rights leader and congressman. Further south, Home Court anchors the site’s recreational programme, while gardens, playgrounds, lawns and pathways extend the Center into the renewed landscape of Jackson Park. Add to this an array of major public art commissions and rich public programming, and the result feels less like an institutional complex and more like an extension of the city itself.

A turquoise bronze sculpture of a singing female figure holding a flame aloft, set against a pale blue sky at the Obama Presidential Center.

Torch Song by Alison Saar in the Women's Garden. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Museum tower mirrored in the still water of Jackson Park's lagoon, its granite bulk and stepped silhouette doubled below. Deep-set windows and the sliver of Mehretu's glass catch the low light, while a screen of young trees softens the base against the green bank.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

An aerial view of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park, the granite Museum tower anchoring curving paths, a circular lawn and terraced landscape by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Julie Mehretu's colourful glass installation marks the tower's face, with the park's lagoon and Lake Michigan beyond.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Former President Barack Obama stands on the campus during a site visit, the Museum tower rising behind him with its inscribed concrete screen and pale granite mass. Hands on hips against a cloudless sky, he surveys the grounds of the centre that carries his name.

Presindent Barack Obama walks through the Obama Presidential Center. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Aerial view of the Obama Presidential Center campus in Jackson Park, Chicago, Illinois — the monumental granite-clad museum tower with its speech-text façade rises above a sweeping landscape of curved pathways, community gardens, solar-panelled low-rise buildings, and newly planted trees, with the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan visible on the horizon. Courtesy of the Obama Foundation.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A corner view of the Museum tower's inscribed concrete screen, where five-foot letters from Obama's Selma speech wrap two faces. Beyond, Jackson Park's lagoon, wooded islands and the blue expanse of Lake Michigan stretch toward the horizon.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Former President Barack Obama stands in silhouette in the Sky Room, framed by the monumental concrete letters of the You Are America installation as they spell out fragments of his Selma speech against the view of Chicago's South Side and Jackson Park beyond under an overcast sky.

Former President Barack Obama tours the Sky Room. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Museum building is the campus’ anchor, both conceptually and visually, its faceted tower clad in New Hampshire granite rising above the park with the gravitas of a civic monument. Inspired by the image of four hands coming together, its massing speaks to collective endeavour rather than solitary commemoration.

Near the top of the tower, a monumental sculptural screen wrapping the south and west corners further sharpens the building’s distinctive silhouette. Titled You Are America, the installation consists of 1.5-metre-tall concrete letters forming phrases drawn from Obama’s 2015 speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches. Set in an adapted version of Gotham, the typeface associated with his campaigns, the words read from afar as an abstract architectural texture; on closer inspection, fragments such as “We the People” and “Yes We Can” emerge as civic prompts.

The same Selma speech also inspired Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu’s monumental 25-metre-high stained-glass installation Uprising of the Sun on the building’s north façade, which introduces another layer of visual complexity.

The Museum tower framed by foliage, its pale granite mass stepping back in faceted volumes against a clear sky. A tall, narrow recess holds Julie Mehretu's vividly coloured glass installation, while small angled windows puncture the stone above a freshly planted landscape.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A close view of the tall recessed window holding Julie Mehretu's stained glass installation, its dense skein of black lines, primary-coloured marks and pixel-like flecks set into the Museum's veined granite. The first glasswork by the Ethiopian-American painter reads as a window onto layered history.

Uprising of the Sun by Julie Mehretu on the Museum's facade. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A close study of the Museum tower's granite cladding, its grey veining and tonal shifts read across angled planes. A tall glazed slot and a band of vertical stone fluting break the surface, the sharp diagonal shadow emphasising the building's faceted geometry against deep blue sky.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • Close-up of the Obama Presidential Center museum tower in Chicago, Illinois — the corner of the building's You Are America installation consisting of large-scale precast concrete lettering reading excerpts from Barack Obama's speeches. Courtesy of the Obama Foundation.

    You Are America installation at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The Museum tower of the Obama Presidential Center seen from below, its faceted New Hampshire granite skin meeting the openwork concrete screen of inscribed letters at the upper corner. A narrow glazed slot and a band of vertical fluting break the stone, set against a clouded Chicago sky.

    Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A close view of one of Jay Heikes's Quintessence bronze star sculpture, its rough, pitted surface mounted on a pale granite courtyard wall. Seven uneven points catch the light against the smooth stone, while a screen of soft green foliage blurs across the foreground.

Quintessence by Jay Heikes. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A double-height lobby within the Museum building, where a staircase rises beside a stone-clad wall toward the Exhibition Galleries. Burnished bronze-toned surfaces, a polished terrazzo floor and full-height glazing onto a courtyard tree fill the space with warm, even daylight.

Museum lobby. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A monumental textile installation cascades down the concrete wall of the Museum’s lobby, its skeins of coloured thread and dense clusters of pale, drooping forms suggesting hanging blossom or moss. Bronze-railed stairs and a stone-clad balustrade descend past the work toward the lobby below.

This Land, Shared Sky by Marie Watt and Nick Cave in the Museum lobby. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Jack Pierson's HOPE mounted on a pale terrazzo wall, each letter salvaged from a different source: a magenta H, a black-and-white O, a navy blue P edged in yellow and red, and a purple E. The mismatched found typography spells out the word bound to Obama's campaign.

HOPE by Jack Pierson in the Museum's Entry Way Pavilion. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Mehretu’s work is part of 28 commissioned art installations by 30 established and emerging artists integrated throughout indoor and outdoor spaces. Stepping inside the Museum, visitors are greeted by Jack Pierson’s HOPE, assembled from found letters, which spell the campaign word now inseparable from Obama’s name. In the main lobby, This Land, Shared Sky, a large textile installation by Nick Cave and Marie Watt, unites Indigenous and Black traditions through beaded nets and sculptural jingle elements, while Mark Bradford’s three-storey-high City of the Big Shoulders in the building’s atrium maps Chicago through fragmentation, collapsing landscape into memory.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby's joint portrait of the Obamas hangs in a dark frame on a pale granite wall near the Museum lobby, a directional sign reading "Exhibition Galleries" alongside. The painted couple is seated amid foliage and densely layered imagery, with Mark Bradford's vivid Chicago map visible further along the parquet-floored hall.

A portrait of President Obama and Michelle Obama by Njideka Akunyilil Crosby at The Obama Presidential Center Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The first official joint portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama by artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby. The portrait depicts the couple side-by-side in an interior space that resembles the oval office at the White House. President Obama is perched on a desk in a dark blue suit and Mrs Obama, wearing a deep ocean blue floral print dress, is sitting close by in an armchair. A picture window in the background looks out on a family house.

Njideka Akunyilil Crosby, The Obamas: Springing Forth, 2026. Acrylic, colored pencils, charcoal, and transfers on paper. © Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Courtesy of the artist, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner. Photo by Marten Elder.

Mark Bradford's City of the Big Shoulders seen across a balustrade, the monumental work mapping Chicago in yellow arteries, magenta and red against the blue of Lake Michigan. A long solid-walnut bench runs along the parquet floor beneath full-height windows in the Museum's atrium.

City of the Big Shoulders by Mark Bradford in the Museum's Our Story Atrium. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Visitors gather before Mark Bradford's City of the Big Shoulders, the monumental painting mapping Chicago in vivid red, pink and blue hanged in the Museum's atrium. A man sits in quiet contemplation on a low bench as daylight enters from full-height windows and signage points toward the Exhibition Galleries.

City of the Big Shoulders by Mark Bradford in the Museum's Our Story Atrium. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The Museum's Toward a More Perfect Union gallery on Level 2, where a backlit display bearing the title and a quotation on democracy frames a central glass case. Projected civil rights protest imagery washes the surrounding walls in violet as a visitor photographs the exhibit.

    Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • Visitors of all ages gather at an interactive exhibit, where a sweeping curved screen scatters luminous points of orange, yellow and violet into figures, trees and a city skyline. Children reach toward embedded touchscreens around a curved console in the darkened gallery.

    Exhibition space at the Museum featuring All Together, a digital mural by Jules Julien. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • A glass-fronted Museum vitrine of presidential artefacts set against teal panels: a yellow protective suit, a pale bust of President Obama, a child's red Supergirl cape, a NASA-patched blue flight jacket and scientific equipment, interspersed with documentary photographs of the moments behind them.

    Innovating for Change display at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • Visitors of varied ages gather in the Museum's campaign gallery before a curved white drum bearing the words YES WE CAN in large timber letters. Backlit panels, archival campaign photographs and headlines line the surrounding walls, a low walnut bench set against the rotunda.

    "YES WE CAN" installation at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Former President Barack Obama stands in silhouette before a glowing yellow wall of family photographs tracing President Obama's early life, including a portrait of him as a smiling child with his mother. A quotation from A Promised Land runs across the top of the backlit display.

President Barack Obama walks through the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A visitor leans on the rail of a Museum gallery before a vast immersive projection, where a violet-and-pink wash frames a tall monument and the silhouettes of figures appear cast against the misty scene. The dreamlike, oversized imagery dwarfs the lone viewer on the timber floor.

The Power of Words installation at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

An overhead view across two Museum levels, where a long solid-walnut bench glows under warm light on the pale timber floor above, and a towering projection of 1970s protest imagery, a WOMEN OF banner raised by a crowd, washes the lower atrium in violet. Visitors move between the two.

Benches designed for the Museum by Norman Teague. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The full-scale replica of President Obama's Oval Office, complete with the carved Resolute Desk, striped wallpaper, deep red drapery and the oval rug. Landscape paintings, a bronze bronco sculpture and the presidential flags complete the recreated room.

The Museum's Oval Office experience. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A detail of the replica Oval Office, where a shell-carved arched niche holds bound volumes, a black ceramic vessel, a monochrome jar and scientific instruments in vitrines. Beside it, a pedimented doorway in crisp white joinery frames two visitors glimpsed through the glazed door against striped wallpaper.

Oval Office experiebce at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Former President Barack Obama, in a dark bomber jacket, pauses at the framed family photographs on the side table of the replica Oval Office, coffee cup in hand. Behind him, the carved Resolute Desk, red drapery, presidential flag and Maine barn paintings fill the recreated room.

Former President Barack Obama tours the Museum's Oval Office experience. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The entrance to the Nelson Mandela Sky Room, its name set in dark letters on a bronze fascia above a concrete wall. A lone visitor reads the reversed lettering at the window beyond, while a framed enlargement of a redacted FBI file from the Freedom Riders case hangs on the wall at the right.

Entrance to the Nelson Mandela Sky Room featuring Freedom Riders by Jenny Holzer. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The exhibition unfolds across four floors as a journey from “Me to We”, tracing the civil rights movements that shaped the Obamas’ lives, the 2008 campaign, the presidency, life in the White House and the ongoing work of civic engagement. Artefacts range from campaign buttons to Michelle Obama’s fashion and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office where visitors can sit behind a replica of the Resolute Desk.

The journey culminates in the Sky Room at the top of the tower, a viewing space open to the public where panoramic views take in the South and West sides of Chicago through the aforementioned monumental concrete letters. Overhead floats Idris Khan’s Sky of Hope, a ceiling painting layered with thousands of hand-stamped words drawn from a speech honouring civil rights leaders, while adjacent spaces feature commissions by Jenny Holzer and Carrie Mae Weems.

The Sky Room seen in full, where Idris Khan's Sky of Hope covers the pale vaulted ceiling in a dense fall of blue hand-stamped words. Visitors gather at the windows, reading the reversed concrete lettering of You Are America against the green expanse of the park and South Side beyond.

The Sky Room at the Museum building fearuring Sky of Hope by Idris Khan. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A detail of Idris Khan's Sky of Hope, thousands of densely layered words in shades of blue raining down a pale ground, the text thinning from a saturated upper band to scattered descenders below. Drawn from FBI files on the Civil Rights-era activists, the painting turns surveillance into memorial.

Sky of Hope by Idris Khan in the Sky Room. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A Sky Room gallery in raking afternoon light, where the openwork concrete letters of You Are America cast looping shadows across the stone floor. The deep window reveal frames a view over Jackson Park and the South Side, an EXIT sign and a lift lobby set into the dark wall at the right.

The Sky Room at the Museum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A Sky Room Vista gallery where Carrie Mae Weems's The Cool Blue Wind spreads across the granite wall as a cluster of indigo-toned images of jazz musicians and civic life. A solid walnut bench faces full-height glazing onto Jackson Park and the distant line of Lake Michigan.

The Cool Blue Wind by Carrie Mae Weems in the Sky Room. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Forum lobby, where a digital wall spells BRING CHANGE HOME in bold colour beside a walnut welcome desk. Overhead, a frieze of black-and-white civil rights photographs runs the length of the terrazzo-floored hall, with spherical pendants leading toward café seating beyond.

The Hadiya Pendleton Atrium in the Forum building featuring To See What They Could See and American Vista by Theaster Gates.

If the Museum building acts as the campus’ visual anchor, the Forum and Chicago Public Library branch operate with a quieter kind of civic intelligence. Low-rise and capped with landscaped roofs, they seem to recede into the park, allowing the terrain to continue across and over them. The Forum houses an auditorium, classrooms, a recording studio and media suite, and a restaurant while the library marks a first-of-its-kind partnership between a presidential centre and a public library, containing more than 3,500 books meaningful to Barack and Michelle Obama.

That restaurant, Tafari’s Kitchen, is named after the late Tafari Campbell, a former White House chef and later the Obama family’s personal chef. Conceived around food as a vehicle for gathering, care and community, it sits naturally within the Center’s broader ecosystem of public life. Alongside the Museum café and local catering partnerships, it underscores the ambition for the campus to function throughout the day, not as a single museum visit but as a place of recurring use and encounter.

The walnut-panelled entrance to the Elie Wiesel Auditorium, its name set in dark lettering on the timber wall. Above runs a row of large black-and-white photographs of civil rights figures and everyday life, while a glimpse of the auditorium's red seating opens beyond on the terrazzo floor.

To See What They Could See and American Vista by Theaster Gates in the Hadiya Pendleton Atrium at the Forum building. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Elie Wiesel Auditorium in the Forum, wrapped in warm timber panelling that climbs walls and ceiling alike. Tiered rows of russet-upholstered seats curve around a central floor and screen, the angled acoustic panels and dense grid of suspended lighting lending an intimate, chamber-like atmosphere.

The Elie Wiesel Auditorium at the Forum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The dining hall at Tafari's Kitchen in the Forum, lit by clustered spherical glass pendants above pale terrazzo. Walnut tables and chairs with sage-green seats gather beside full-height glazing, while a band of archival photographs runs along the stone wall toward the auditorium beyond.

    Hadiya Pendleton Atrium at the Forum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The dining room at Tafari's Kitchen, with walnut tables, tan leather chairs and a long marble counter lined with stools beneath full-height glazing onto a courtyard. A framed portrait of a man holding a freshly baked loaf hangs on the timber wall, a tribute to the kitchen's namesake.

    Tafari's Kitchen at the Forum featuring artwork by Kate Capshaw. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The kitchen at Tafari's Kitchen during service, where chefs in whites and aprons plate dishes beneath a row of polished steel heat lamps. Stainless counters, stacked crockery and a tiled back wall frame the brigade at work, a glass-fronted refrigerator to the right.

Tafari's Kitchen at the Forum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • A private dining room panelled in dark walnut, with tan leather Brno-style cantilever chairs drawn up to walnut tables on a softly striped rug. Above the marble-topped credenza hangs Hugo McCloud's Hidden Reflection, its serene palm-lined waterscape extending onto a glazed side panel.

    Hidden Reflection by Hugo McCloud in the Private Dining Room in Tafari's Kitchen at the Forum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The Museum café, where Lindsay Adams's Weary Blues runs as silkscreened panels of deep blue shot with red, orange and pink across the upper wall. Pale-ash chairs, tan leather stools and a charcoal banquette gather at marble and timber tables beneath a slatted wood ceiling.

    Weary Blues by Lindsay Adams in the Museum's Cafe. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The library's central reading table ranged with featured book covers, blue leather chairs drawn up on a deep blue carpet. Oak shelving rises two storeys, a richly coloured mural is visible on the right, with the doorway to the President's Reading Room set into the timber wall beneath the globe pendant lights on the background.

    Chicago Public Library branch. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Chicago Public Library branch, lined floor to ceiling in pale oak shelving beneath clustered glass globe pendants. Blue reading chairs gather on a striped carpet, a vivid mural runs along the room's length on one side with full-height glazing on the other side offering views to a planted courtyard.

Chicago Public Library branch feeaturing Reading Circles/Weaving Dreams/Seeding Futures mural by Aliza Nisenbaum. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

Home Court, the athletic centre by Moody Nolan, its faceted metal and fritted-glass volume canting outward above a curved stone base inscribed with the building's name. Visitors move along terraced planting beds and seating, the diamond-patterned cladding catching the afternoon light.

Home Court building. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

To the south, Home Court extends the project’s community ethos into sport and youth programming. Designed by Moody Nolan, the largest Black-owned architecture firm in the United States, the 60,000-square-foot facility includes an NBA-regulation basketball court, gymnasium and flexible spaces for wellness, leadership and community events. Its metal and fritted-glass exterior draws on the pattern of a basketball net, Nearby, a playground populated with oversized native fauna, warblers’ nests, climbing structures and slides makes the campus as much a place for children as for scholars, tourists or policy enthusiasts.

An overhead view of the playground, its organic forms reading as a map of interlocking lagoons in turquoise, blue and sand. Curving paths thread between climbing nets, slides and a teal canopy, with timber benches, planting beds and the surrounding lawns framing the composition.

The Playground. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

A young child in a striped jumper walks past a giant bird-shaped play structure clad in cream, brown and teal shingles, its tail forming a slide. Oversized reeds rise behind on rubberised blue ground, the inscribed Museum tower visible above the trees in the distance.

The Playground. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Museum tower viewed from the terraced native planting, a timber-plank path climbing through dense beds of young perennials and grasses toward the inscribed screen. Stone slabs step up the slope, slender trees and a bright streaked sky completing the restored landscape.

The Wetland Walk. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • A winding path of rough-hewn limestone slabs steps down a planted slope, set among flowering plants, ground-cover thyme and ornamental grasses. The pale, irregular stones catch the sun against deep green foliage and drifts of magenta bloom in the Center's naturalistic landscape.

    The Wetland Walk. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • A beekeeper in a white suit and red gauntlets lifts a frame heavy with honeycomb and clustered bees from an open hive on the Center's grounds. The close view captures the golden comb, the dense brood of workers and a hive tool tucked into one gloved hand against the soft green garden behind.

    Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit & Vegetable Garden. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

  • The Museum tower seen from the kitchen garden, its inscribed screen reading clearly against blue sky above the pale granite mass. Timber raised beds planted with young vegetables and herbs fill the foreground, a low fence and slender saplings marking the edge of the productive terrace.

    Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit & Vegetable Garden. Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

An aerial view of the Museum tower at dusk, its stepped granite mass set against a pink-streaked sky. Julie Mehretu's tall, jewel-toned stained glass installation glows from within the stone face, while curving paths and dark planting beds wind through the landscape below toward the lagoon.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

At once monumental and porous, commemorative and future-facing, the Obama Presidential Center does not simply ask visitors to look back on a presidency. It asks them to see themselves within the unfinished democratic project that made it possible. In that sense, its most radical departure from precedent may not be programmatic at all, but ideological: a presidential centre conceived not as the final chapter of a legacy, but as an invitation to continue it.

An aerial view at dusk of the Obama Presidential Center, the inscribed granite Museum tower glowing above Jackson Park. Curving paths, the Eleanor Roosevelt garden's planting beds and a solar-panelled roof spread below, with downtown Chicago's skyline on the horizon at sunset.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.

The Obama Presidential Center at twilight, the Museum tower's inscribed screen lit gold above the park as the Chicago skyline fades on the horizon. A long slot of warm interior light marks the tower's face, with the empty avenue and lamplit paths threading the darkened grounds below.

Courtesy The Obama Foundation.