{"id":58424,"date":"2025-09-12T00:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T00:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/58424\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T00:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T00:33:08","slug":"obama-presidential-center-announces-nine-new-artist-commissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/58424\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Presidential Center Announces Nine New Artist Commissions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe forthcoming Obama Presidential Center<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\n\tSix of the commissions are earmarked for the OPC\u2019s Museum building, which rises up at eight stories in Jackson Park. A text-based sculpture, spelling out \u201cHOPE,\u201d by Jack Pierson will stand in its entry pavilion, while a bronze sculpture, titled Receive, by Kiki Smith will go in the building\u2019s Hope & Change lobby. A digital mural consisting of 11 illustrations by Jules Julien will go in the fifth floor\u2019s Civics Gallery.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tNick 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 \u201cIndigenous and Black traditions in a celebration of movement, sound, and shared resilience,\u201d according to a release.<\/p>\n

\n\tTwo paintings have been commissioned for the building\u2019s Skyroom, on the top floor: Jenny Holzer will create a text-based piece that draws from the FBI\u2019s files on the Freedom Riders, while Idris Khan\u2019s Sky of Hope will see thousands of hand-stamped words, drawn from President Obama\u2019s 2015 speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches, installed on the ceiling and radiating out from the skylight. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tElsewhere on the campus, Nekisha Durrett\u2019s sculpture Hem of Heaven will be installed in the Forum building\u2019s Harriet Tubman Courtyard, Aliza Nisenbaum\u2019s mural Reading Circles\/ Weaving Dreams\/ Seeding Futures will hang in the Library building\u2019s main reading room, and outdoors will be Alison Saar\u2019s bronze Torch Song in the Women\u2019s Garden.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese new works join five other commissions\u2014by artists Lindsay Adams, Spencer Finch, Richard Hunt, Maya Lin, and Julie Mehretu\u2014that 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.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEach of these commissions is a meditation on civic life,\u201d Louise Bernard, the founding director of the Obama Presidential Center Museum, said in a statement. \u201cFrom 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The forthcoming Obama Presidential Center in Chicago has announced nine new commissions by 10 artists that will be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,42152],"class_list":{"0":"post-58424","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-obama-presidential-center"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}