Workers finish installing words from President Barack Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march on the exterior of the Obama Presidential Center Museum building on Feb. 17, 2026, in Chicago. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

There’s not enough, however, about how the museum tower’s contours and sight-lines, embedded in and skirting each elevation in trapezoidal fragmentation, flaunt engineering and defy gravity. Its understated Brutalism and Obama’s supergraphic address crowning an epic turret/vessel fittingly speak to ancient border guard structures, temples, and sculpture from the Mediterranean and Meso-America. It’s recognized, on one hand, that the building accomplishes much more than a library or meeting place about the past and that the constitution of its interior depends on a creative exploitation of technology and museum function that not only re-stages history but catapults the future of institutional resourcefulness and edification.

The Words of Hope sculpture, on the outside of the museum tower Photographer: Talia Sprague/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Now it helps, perhaps, that an artifactual pastiche on a revered green site straddling one of the country’s signature educational and architectural establishments is expected to serve a subject of reform, cultural reflection, and biography. But that was the challenge that Obama and his architects did not have to take. They could have designed a conventional library that had hubris and modesty, much like the president’s persona. However, the result would not have the risk and intelligence in what is an exquisite and poignant watchtower model, a building designed to examine the horizon and predict change, and one whose profile and shadow embody care and guardianship. Nor did it have to call attention to the subjects of human struggle and victory on which the OPC and its enduring symbol rests.

Museum Tower under construction

The meaning coded in the uniquely proportioned. muscular eight-story tower is mostly attendant to the formal history embedded in its granite cladding, modest glazing, diving inclines and visionary abstraction –  something missing in the frigid velocity of parametric design. The connection between strategic planning and final form is visceral in the photographs of the tower’s construction. These images address the complexity of producing non-orthogonal architecture to achieve a 225-foot tower with shifting asymmetry on non-aligned floors, beyond sloped, green roofs and an underground clean-energy system designed to heat and cool the entire campus without fossil fuels. That may be formally aloof to hacks who think it’s a bit awkward.

The tower’s design processes are as much a response to the monoculture of contemporary mixed-use architecture with it’s passive visual history, and/or the lack of intellectual inquiry in design, materials, and construction. The OPC reveals the enthusiasm of producing something somehow ancient and futuristic that rechristens the landscape of our trivial aesthetic contemporaneity and carnivalesque visitor experiences.

Ghallis Tower, Malta

The iconicity of the tower calls to mind the classic 17^th century Maltese De Redin watchtowers, among others still in use during WW2 across European borders, whose skin and sinew still shape vigilance and sovereignty. One reasonable question about the Obama Center tower is a dispute between the interior and exterior where the exterior form plays by its own rules. While that may be why some find it unorthodox it’s really because the interior is tasteful and disarming while the exterior is intrepid and resolute. A formal debate may be a modernist rule breaker but only in the spirit of avant-gardism. Welcome to Chicago where details like this matter.

The Center becomes a capstone of a protracted local history based in part on progressivist art and architecture theory and another on the restrictions of urban geography. The Midway Studios of Lorado Taft and subsequently the University of Chicago art department faced the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the event which established Chicago as the new industrial, economic, and cultural center, and fastest growing city in the world. If the World’s Fair celebrated the young city’s world-class economic status it can also be said to have inaugurated the South Side as the obligatory origin of its world-famous art, design, and music cultures. Paradoxically, Obama and the other subjects of the president’s center now occupy the grounds on which they would have not been welcome to exhibit 103 years ago. The “arc of the moral universe,” truly, on both counts.

Thanks to my learned colleague Patrick Ulrich for conversation and positive vibes.

The conversation moves from the legendary Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop to the anarchic magic of Elsewhere’s living archive, through New Orleans arts policy, cross-sector cultural work, printmaking discourse, academia, administration, and the impossible balancing act between artists, institutions, donors, and communities.

George discusses the evolution of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts from grantmaking organization to one of the most significant artist studio and printmaking ecosystems in the country, including the continuation of Blackburn’s radical community printshop model and the preservation of a major archive featuring artists like Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden.

Name Drops & Links

Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts — https://www.efanyc.org/

Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop — https://www.rbpmw-efanyc.org/

Elsewhere Museum — https://goelsewhere.org/

NADA New York — https://www.newartdealers.org/

Library of Congress — https://www.loc.gov/

Mellon Foundation — https://www.mellon.org/

Faith Ringgold — https://www.faithringgold.com/

Elizabeth Catlett — https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-Catlett

Romare Bearden — https://beardenfoundation.org/

Jasper Johns — https://www.jasper-johns.com/

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation — https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/

Common Field — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Field

Creative Time — https://creativetime.org/

Walker Art Center — https://walkerart.org/

Central Saint Martins — https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — https://www.unc.edu/

Duke University — https://duke.edu/

June 19-21, 2026
Mana Contemporary: 2233 S Throop St

2. Artist Talk and Screening with Las Nietas de Nonó

June 20, 5-6PM
Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church: 600 W Fullerton Pkwy

3. Gerald Williams: Screaming at the Sky

June 19, 5-7PM
Kavi Gupta Gallery: 835 W Washington Blvd

4.  Plead

Screenshot

June 20, 6-9PM
Flatline Gallery: 1925 N Milwaukee Ave
Work by: Anthony Yew, Dana Dawud, Machine Yearning, Anne-Joelle Tan, Poorspigga, Ruby Bailey, Safiya Hawa

5. Nick D’Alessandro: Universal September

June 20, 5-8PM
Prairie: 2055 W Cermak Ave

Hey Chicago, submit your events here.

Name Drops & Links
Tali Halpern — https://tali.rocks/
Twelve Ten Gallery — https://twelvetengallery.com/
NADA Miami — https://www.newartdealers.org/
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) — https://www.saic.edu/
Loom Room Chicago — https://www.lmrmchicago.com/
Hope Lange — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Lange
Gregg Araki — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Araki
Nowhere — https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119809/
Mike Kelley — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kelley_(artist)
Paul McCarthy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCarthy
Tracey Emin — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracey_Emin
Sylvia Plath — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Plath
Elliott Smith — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Smith
Ken Burns — https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/
Nirvana — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(band)
The B-52’s — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_B-52s
Guns N’ Roses — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns_N%27_Roses
Howardena Pindell — https://www.garthgreenan.com/artists/howardena-pindell
Melissa Cody — https://www.garthgreenan.com/artists/melissa-cody
Cranbrook Academy of Art — https://cranbrookart.edu/
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art — https://bmoca.org/
The Weaving Mill — https://theweavingmill.com/
Mikey Mosher — https://www.mikeymosher.com/
Cindy Sherman — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman
Noelia Towers — https://www.noeliatowers.com/
The Killers — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Killers

William Powhida — https://williampowhida.com/
NADA Miami — https://www.newartdealers.org/
ArtReview Power 100 — https://artreview.com/power-100/
Ben Davis — https://www.benadavis.com/
Art Angle Podcast – Art Angle Podcast
Nicole Eisenman —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Eisenman
52 Walker — https://52walker.com/
Zero Art Fair — https://zeroartfair.com/
Flag Art Foundation — https://www.flagartfoundation.org/

Live from the fair circuit heat (not Miami… but spiritually always Miami), Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford catch up with artist Justin H. Long, self-described “original Florida man,” to talk boats, comedy, identity, and the strange poetics of nautical culture.

Long’s sculptural practice moves between deadpan humor and conceptual rigor: a capsized Laser sailboat turned vertical monument, a palm tree replacing its mast, and a title—S.O.S.—that refuses to resolve cleanly into sentiment. From Morse code to yacht club politics, from Spanglish boat names to disaster-relief coolers, Long builds a practice that blends maritime history, Miami mythologies, and a punk-inflected irreverence toward art’s seriousness.

Also featured in this episode – a CalArts performance art involving chocolate milk vomit, signal flags translating hip-hop lyrics, and why humor still makes the art world uncomfortable.

Justin H. Long — https://justinhlong.com
Duncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/
Ryan Peter Miller — http://ryanpetermiller.com/
Tom Sanford — https://www.tomsanford.art/
Lumpen Radio — https://lumpenradio.com
Florida International University — https://www.fiu.edu
CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) — https://calarts.edu
Baker Hall Gallery — https://bakerhall.art/
Spring/Break Art Show — https://www.springbreakartshow.com
Design Miami — https://www.designmiami.com
Key Biscayne Yacht Club — https://kbyc.org
Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans — https://cacno.org
Damien Hirst — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damien_Hirst
Nicole Eisenman — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Eisenman
The Simpsons — https://www.thesimpsons.com
Kids in the Hall — https://www.kidsinthehall.ca

June 12, 6-9PM
Co-Prosperity: 3219-21 S Morgan St
Work by: Zach Hill, Coco Clockner, and Zante Moore

2. nánwàng de y? ti?n

June 12, 6-10PM
SHANGHAI SEMINARY: 3262 S Morgan St

3. Josué Esaú: The Carocal

Screenshot

June 13, 6-9PM
boundary: 2334 W 111th Pl

4. Richard Marks: Concrete Age

June 13, 6-9PM
Parlour and Ramp: 2130 W 21st St

5. Nicole Schonitzer and Jingqi Wang Steinheiser: Creature Reverie

June 12, 6-11PM
Heaven Gallery: 1550 N Milwaukee Ave

Hey Chicago, submit your events here.