Art On Campus

Weary Blues

Visitors to the Center’s Café will have the opportunity to experience Weary Blues . The piece is a look at resilience, beauty, and the power of abstract forms translated into silkscreen panels on fabric. The work is named after the iconic Langston Hughes poem and carries forward a legacy of Black creative expression. 

Museum | Cafe 

This piece by Crosby is the first portrait of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama created together weaves archival imagery, family albums, historical ephemera, and cultural touchstones. This densely layered work honors and connects the Obamas’ lasting legacy to the many generations of artists, activists, citizens, and leaders whose collective journeys helped pave their way to the White House and sustained them through two terms.

Museum | Main Lobby

City of the Big Shoulders

Bradford’s City of the Big Shoulders is a monumental painting enveloping the 3-story west wall of the Our Story Atrium in the Museum. The painting maps Chicago through an embrace of fragmentation and perspective, collapsing landscape into memory and compressing history into a story of pressure, power, survival, and hope.

Museum | Our Story Atrium 

Be the Change!

Tyanna J. Buie’s Be the Change! is a large installation that uses screen-printed images and hand-applied ink. The art, initially inspired by President Obama’s first election, focuses on themes of hope, change, and the importance of civic engagement. Buie's piece was influenced by her own memory of participating in Chicago’s annual Bud Billiken Parade as a young adult, standing with a group supporting "Obama for Senate."

Forum | Democracy in Action Lounge

Still Holding the Scent of Flowers

This mixed-media installation of the White House Rose Garden weaves roses, tulips, magnolias, pink and blue hyacinths, carrots, broccoli, herbs, and apple tree blossoms into a meditation on the American landscape. The piece draws on the history of the garden and Mrs. Obama’s focus on healthy eating. Campos-Pons’ interpretation of the White House Rose Garden is inscribed in bloom forever as a symbol of memory, renewal, diversity, and hope.

Museum Exhibits | The People’s House

This Land, Shared Sky (in collaboration with Marie Watt)

This Land, Shared Sky is a multimedia textile installation between artists Nick Cave and Marie Watt. This dynamic piece unites Native and Black traditions through beaded nets and jingle elements. Cave, best known for his soundscapes, will incorporate textiles with elements of movement and sound.

Museum | Main Lobby

Hem of Heaven

Durrett's Hem of Heaven is a vibrant reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s shawl. The freestanding sculpture is made from thousands of handmade, ceramic tiles, intricately woven together to symbolize strength, community, and collective effort.

Forum | Harriet Tubman Courtyard

Memory Landscape (Nairobi, Chicago, Honolulu, Jakarta), 2025

Finch’s Memory Landscape (Nairobi, Chicago, Honolulu, Jakarta), 2025   is a tile wall mural installation inspired by memories of places from President Obama's formative years. The colors for each location, including Honolulu, Jakarta, Chicago, and Nairobi, were selected personally by President Obama. 

Forum | Lower Lobby 

To See What They Could See

Gate’s piece, created in honor of Hadiya Pendleton—a 15-year-old Chicago student who marched in President Obama’s second inauguration parade and was tragically killed a week later due to gun violence— stands as a symbol of community, strength, and civic action. Gates’s installation reflects on the power of collective resilience and honors the everyday individuals whose lives and practices sustain and enshrine movements for justice and change. 

Forum | Hadiya Pendleton Atrium

Yet With a Steady Beat

This wall installation features 17 circular prints that reference Gibson’s use of political buttons and drums, which are recurring elements in his interdisciplinary practice. Working across painting, installation, video, and performance, Gibson often engages Native American hand-drums, which he views as a means of summoning power, calling forward ancestors, and sending intentional vibrations into the world. The piece reflects the voices and experiences that have come to define American culture.

Museum Exhibits | A More Inclusive America

Quintessence

Heikes’ Quintessence is a group of seven-pointed bronze stars placed on one of the outer courtyard walls. The artwork shows the many sides of American identity and asks people to think deeply as the sun shines and moves across the rough surfaces of the stars.

Courtyard 1

Book Bird 

Sculptor Richard Hunt, shaped by his life on Chicago’s south side and role in the Civil Rights Movement, explored the meaning of freedom over his career. Book Bird, his final work, captures a bird bursting from the pages of an open book, evoking the freedom found in reading and learning. Before his passing, Hunt hoped that people would see the piece “as something that encapsulates the progress one can make through reading and study.”

Library | Library Reading Garden

Broken Men

This large-scale mosaic renders the multifaceted and complicated nature of lived experience through abstract figures whose ambiguous, wide-eyed expressions invite viewers to contemplate the universal resonance within the human condition.

Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit & Vegetable Garden and Teaching Kitchen

The Balance of Power 

All Together

All Together , a large digital mural, shows 11 thematic scenes made from thousands of small dots. Each dot symbolizes the journey from individual to collective action and the ripple effect of democratic participation. Together, they show the beauty that can come from working together to create change.

Museum | Level 3 Democracy 101 Gallery

Museum | Level 5 Imagine Your Impact

Sky of Hope 

Sky of Hope is a massive ceiling painting that overlaps thousands of hand-stamped words. Each word comes from a speech President Obama gave honoring Civil Rights leaders. Layers of stamps create a burst of color above, turning the room itself into part of the artwork.

Museum | Sky Room 

Pass it Forward (in collaboration with Dorian Sylvain) 

Artist Sam Kirk has partnered with Dorian Sylvain on a collaborative mural that celebrates the cultural legacies of Chicago's South Side, blending vibrant narrative imagery and community history to honor the neighborhoods that shaped the Obama family. Born and raised on the South Side, Kirk’s public art practice shares a longstanding commitment to creating art that honors community power and collective imagination. 

Home Court | Main Court

Seeing Through the Universe

Lin, one of President Obama’s favorite artists, has created the stunning Seeing Through the Universe , a stone sculptural water feature. The sculpture is an upright oculus piece that mists, and a flat “pebble” piece that fills with water and cascades over.  

Outdoor Grounds | Ann Dunham Water Terrace

The Cool Blue Wind 

Weem’s The Cool Blue Wind is a photographic collage printed on silver and gold metallic paper accompanied by original music. The images in collage reference Obama’s historic 2008 victory and the freedom found in the organized improvisational nature of jazz. The associated soundtrack, centers jazz, collective memory, and democratic participation.

Museum | Sky Room Vista

Hidden Reflection

This painting traces significant locations in President Obama’s life, imbuing the power of place with biographical meaning. Working with his signature single-use plastic and oil paint, McCloud’s serene composition is manifold – the canvas is layered with overtures to geospatial mapping while it gestures to the sensorial underpinnings of memory, the ineffable qualities of time, and how such elements mold a person’s experience. The artist’s abstract use of shadow thereby mirrors the idea of self-reflexivity, a story always in the process of unfolding.

Private Dining Room | Restaurant 

Uprising of the Sun

Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu created a monumental installation on the Museum's north side. Incorporating many styles, Uprising of the Sun is a stirring response to President Obama’s speech at the 50th anniversary of the Selma march. Her work invites us to look through layers of glass, just as we look through layers of history, to truly see how change happens.

Museum | Exterior of the Museum

Reading Circles/Weaving Dreams/Seeding Futures

Reading Circles/Weaving Dreams/Seeding Futures is a mural that depicts moments of civic life within a public library. Centered on the library as a place of dreaming, storytelling, and shared histories, the work offers a living portrait of community in action. 

Library | Main Reading Room

HOPE

Piersons's new piece is a dynamic sculpture spelling HOPE. The installation is made from found letters that reference Americana and echo President Obama’s defining campaign message.

Museum | Entry Pavillion 

Bending the Arc  

Puryear's monumental sculpture is inspired by this quotation Bending the Arc , attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. and carried forward by John Lewis. The artist believes that the arc of the moral universe does not bend toward justice by itself, but only when it is moved by men and women of good will.

Puryear created the sculpture by hand-carving a straight, 34-foot long wooden beam. It was 3D scanned, then enlarged and curved digitally, before reaching its final form in stainless steel. This work pays homage to John Lewis, who believed that the work of justice requires an uncompromising vision, consistent effort, and courageous action.

Outdoor Grounds | John Lewis Plaza

Torch Song 

Saar’s Torch Song is a towering cast bronze figure inspired by the Statue of Liberty and embodies the soul of Chicago’s blues heritage. As the bronze figure raises a gilded flame in song, she becomes a beacon of resistance and truth, igniting viewers to challenge the status quo and expose injustice.

Outdoor Grounds | Women’s Garden

Durative  

This piece is part of Simpson’s ongoing “Ice” series depicting painted icescapes set against an expansive sky. Simpson layered silkscreened images of glaciers and smoke, dripping indigo acrylic onto fiberglass and canvas into an engrossing vision of an icy world most humans have only seen in photographs. Integrated within the architecture of the room, the work creates a quiet dialogue between the intimacy of a domestic interior and the boundlessness of the landscape.

Museum | Presidential Suite

Receive

Smith’s Receive is the largest of the artist's bronze sculptures with moon and stars. In keeping with Smith’s previous work, Receive celebrates our shared connection to the cosmos, offering hope, orientation, and solace in the heart of the museum. 

Museum | Main Lobby

Pass it Forward (in collaboration with Sam Kirk)

Artist Dorian Sylvain has partnered with Sam Kirk on a collaborative mural that embodies the spirit of our connection to the past while reimagining our future through the eyes of the next generation. Sylvain’s extensive background in scenic design, public mural painting, curation, education, and community planning, explore the relationship between historical erasure and art as a tool of liberation and resistance.

Home Court | Main Court

A series of eight inclusively designed wooden benches in the Museum exhibits represent an offering to the artist’s South Side roots. Carved from solid walnut in tones ranging from deep chocolate to warm amber, the wood glows with vitality, the varied unpredictability of its grain reflecting the rich diversity of Black heritage. These beautifully crafted, fluid forms highlight the signature functionality of Teague’s work – at once aesthetically refined and harmonious.

Museum | Museum Gallery Seating

This Land, Shared Sky (in collaboration with Nick Cave)

This Land, Shared Sky is a multimedia textile installation between artists Nick Cave and Marie Watt. This work unites Indigenous and Black traditions through beaded nets and sculptural jingle elements. Watt has spent more than two decades creating works that bridge Indigenous history, culture, community, and memory.

Museum | Main Lobby