The forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has announced nine new commissions by 10 artists that will be spread across its 19.3-acre campus, which is scheduled to open next spring.
Six of the commissions are earmarked for the OPC’s Museum building, which rises up at eight stories in Jackson Park. A text-based sculpture, spelling out “HOPE,” by Jack Pierson will stand in its entry pavilion, while a bronze sculpture, titled Receive, by Kiki Smith will go in the building’s Hope & Change lobby. A digital mural consisting of 11 illustrations by Jules Julien will go in the fifth floor’s Civics Gallery.
Nick Cave and Marie Watt will collaborate on a textile-and-sound installation that will be installed the main lobby. Titled This Land, Shared Sky, the work will be made of beaded nets and sculptural jingle elements that merge “Indigenous and Black traditions in a celebration of movement, sound, and shared resilience,” according to a release.
Two paintings have been commissioned for the building’s Skyroom, on the top floor: Jenny Holzer will create a text-based piece that draws from the FBI’s files on the Freedom Riders, while Idris Khan’s Sky of Hope will see thousands of hand-stamped words, drawn from President Obama’s 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, installed on the ceiling and radiating out from the skylight.
Elsewhere on the campus, Nekisha Durrett’s sculpture Hem of Heaven will be installed in the Forum building’s Harriet Tubman Courtyard, Aliza Nisenbaum’s mural Reading Circles/ Weaving Dreams/ Seeding Futures will hang in the Library building’s main reading room, and outdoors will be Alison Saar’s bronze Torch Song in the Women’s Garden.
These new works join five other commissions—by artists Lindsay Adams, Spencer Finch, Richard Hunt, Maya Lin, and Julie Mehretu—that have been previously announced. The OPC plans to have more than 25 site-specific artist commissions for its campus by the time it opens next year.
“Each of these commissions is a meditation on civic life,” Louise Bernard, the founding director of the Obama Presidential Center Museum, said in a statement. “From the intimacy of painting to the scale of public sculpture, these works speak to themes at the heart of the Center: resilience, memory, identity, and hope. Together, they create a deeply textured cultural landscape that reflects our past, animates the present, and gestures toward the future.”
