The Obama Presidential Center Museum is set to open to the public on Juneteenth 2026 in Chicago’s Jackson Park, with four exhibition levels spanning nearly 35,000 square feet. Its design team includes Ralph Appelbaum Associates and batwin + robin Productions. The museum will tell the story of President and Mrs. Obama, America’s first Black president and First Lady, through history, democracy, public service and the power of people to create change.
The four levels are titled Toward a More Perfect Union, Working for the Common Good, The People’s House and We the People. Their sequence begins with the nation’s founding ideals and unfinished work, moves through the people, movements, policies, challenges and accomplishments that shaped the Obama presidency, and ends with civic questions facing the present and future. The museum uses artifacts, large-scale and immersive media, storytelling, and hands-on digital and analog interactives to present democracy as a living practice shaped by ordinary people working together.
Major exhibition highlights
- Power of Words: An 88-foot-tall media canvas combines speech, sound, image, poetry and art to explore how words can inspire action and move people toward change.
- Toward a More Perfect Union: An illuminated, prismatic opening gallery links the nation’s founding ideals and contradictions to the people and movements that have pushed American democracy toward greater justice and inclusion.
- Yes We Can Campaign: A circular gallery with a panoramic media installation of volunteer voices and crowd-sourced campaign objects places visitors inside the grassroots movement of 2008.
- Democracy 101: A hands-on civics exhibit uses interactive experiences to help visitors understand how democracy works and to build knowledge, confidence and participation.
Panorama of a Presidency is a sweeping media room that surrounds visitors with a behind-the-scenes view of the activities and places that make up the daily work of the presidency. Detailed miniature White House rooms offer a more intimate look at how the Obamas opened the People’s House through traditions, celebrations, performances and public programs. The Life in the White House artifacts collection includes fashion, state gifts and sports memorabilia, and is presented as a way to show how the Obamas made the White House feel open, inclusive, personal and reflective of America’s diversity and vibrancy.
Imagine Your Impact runs through all levels as a recurring interactive thread and culminates in a shared media experience with a large-scale digital art commission. Its purpose is to invite visitors to see how individual actions can join together to create collective change. Contemporary art is also woven throughout the museum: Norman Teague designed custom benches, and commissioned works by Jeffrey Gibson, Jules Julien and María Magdalena Campos-Pons bring expressions of identity and hope into the experience.
Inclusive design is foundational. The museum is intended to support visitors of all ages and abilities through tactile stations and replicas, captioning, ASL interpretation, audio description, assistive listening, clear wayfinding and interactive opportunities for participation.
The museum places the Obamas’ journey within a broader American civic narrative rooted in Chicago’s South Side and shaped by national and global movements for justice. It also connects that story to people continuing to make change in their communities, including participants in the Obama Foundation’s Global Programs. Visitors are meant to leave with a deeper understanding of the Obamas’ legacy and a renewed sense of their own agency in the ongoing work of democracy at home and abroad.