Chicago’s forthcoming Obama Presidential Center will feature an 83-foot-tall stained work by Julie Mehretu, an acclaimed painter who has regularly worked at large scale, producing pieces that chart interconnected histories and honor painful events using abstraction.
Mehretu’s latest work, Uprising of the Sun, will be embedded in the wall of a museum at the center, which is due to open in 2026. The piece is meant to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma marches, a key event in the Civil Rights Movement.
To create the work, Mehretu will draw on the oeuvres of three Black artists: the 19th-century American landscape painter Robert S. Duncanson, the 20th-century American modernist Jacob Lawrence, and the 20th-century Ethiopian stained glass artist Afwerk Tekele. She will borrow images from these artists, then intermingle them in a way that she said pays homage to Chicago’s history.
Mehretu, who was born in Addis Ababa and raised in East Lansing, Michigan, said that while conceiving the work, she specifically had in mind a photograph of the crossing of Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. On a fateful day known as Bloody Sunday, police attacked demonstrators on that bridge in an attempt to prevent them from reaching Montgomery.
“Knowing that moment will be etched into the wall of this new monument on the South Side of Chicago, I’m struck by how the city’s identity has been shaped by the Great Migration and the influx of diverse cultures,” Mehretu said in a statement. “This monumental building and its park, with its view of both the painting’s exterior and the historic landscape, symbolize the deep connection between Chicago’s past and present. The city’s story is incomplete without acknowledging its history, which continues to shape its landscape and identity.”
“Your concept is on point,” Obama himself told Mehretu in a Zoom conversation that was recorded and posted to X. “And I think it will become one of the most important aspects of the Center, and will end up becoming an iconic contribution to the South Side and the city of Chicago.”
