The Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago’s Jackson Park is set to open to the public on Juneteenth 2026. Across four exhibition levels and nearly 35,000 square feet, the museum presents 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.
Ralph Appelbaum Associates and batwin + robin Productions designed the museum. Its visitor journey is organized around four major exhibition levels: Toward a More Perfect Union, Working for the Common Good, The People’s House and We the People. The 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 leads into civic questions facing the present and future.
Exhibition highlights
Among the featured spaces, Power of Words is an 88-foot-tall media canvas combining speech, sound, image, poetry and art. The installation explores how words can inspire action and move people toward change. Toward a More Perfect Union is an illuminated, prismatic opening gallery that connects the nation’s founding ideals and contradictions with the people and movements that have pushed American democracy toward greater justice and inclusion.
The Yes We Can Campaign circular gallery uses a panoramic media installation with volunteer voices and crowd-sourced campaign objects to immerse visitors in the grassroots movement of 2008. Democracy 101 is a hands-on civics exhibit that explores how democracy works through approachable, interactive experiences intended 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 smaller, more intimate look at how the Obamas opened the People’s House through traditions, celebrations, performances and public programs. A collection of Life in the White House artifacts includes fashion, state gifts and sports memorabilia, showing how the Obamas sought to make the White House feel open, inclusive, personal and reflective of America’s diversity and vibrancy while upholding and expanding traditions.
Interaction, art and access
Imagine Your Impact runs as a recurring interactive thread across all levels of the museum. It culminates in a shared media experience with a large-scale digital art commission that invites visitors to see how individual actions can join together to create collective change. Contemporary artwork is woven throughout the museum. Alongside Norman Teague’s custom-designed benches, commissioned works by Jeffrey Gibson, Jules Julien and María Magdalena Campos-Pons bring layered visual expressions of identity and hope into the experience.
Inclusive design is a foundational part of the project. The museum is designed to support visitors of all ages and abilities, integrating accessible, multisensory experiences that include tactile stations and replicas, captioning, ASL interpretation, audio description, assistive listening, clear wayfinding and interactive opportunities for participation.
The museum frames its subject as a story about possibility: what becomes possible when ordinary people organize, participate, lead, listen and act in common purpose. The exhibits place President and Mrs. Obama’s journey within a broader American civic narrative rooted in the South Side of Chicago, shaped by national and global movements for justice, and carried forward by people who continue 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.