That's a gift link so you can see the photos of the artwork inside the building, which I think is quite good, and so you can gaze at the "View from the Sky Room" photograph that shows a view from the building, looking out through one of the letters of the text from an Obama speech that you can attempt to read if you stand on the ground and gaze upward at the building.
The view from the Sky Room is garish chaos, but the chaos seems designed to give ordinary citizens a place to play, that is, it's not trying to look good, it's trying to offer what can be used. Included in the play equipment is an N.B.A.-size basketball court and a "sledding hill." We'll see how much freewheeling tomfoolery unfolds in this space. The message is casual playfulness for the people, and it is in distinct contrast to the design ideas Trump has been imposing on the White House and elsewhere. His message is grandeur and elegance.
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So much ugliness in one place.
Nothing "garish" about that place. No sirree. It's just audacious beauty and decency, disguised as a galactic prison tower.
And his official Presidential portrait--another example of art, beauty, decency and taste.
I don't know what we ever did to deserve this guy.
“We'll see how much freewheeling tomfoolery unfolds in this space. The message is casual playfulness for the people”
In juxtaposition to 0bama’s earnest efforts to disembowel the USA from within. Just go away, BIG Zer0.
Broke a mirror or two
I’ve seen zero evidence that Obama values art, beauty or decency. He broke tradition with every prior president indecently. He sabotaged his successor and continues to lie about it to this day.
You mean the guy who started the Syrian conflict and the Libya conflict, the ones that generated huge refugee flows to Europe? That noble, worldly, and wise President, appreciator of great art and literature, and political philosopher to rival Seneca? That Obama?
Since the 60's, many public facilities have contained too much propaganda, much of which doesn't hold up over time, and for me, is a little embarrassing in its naivete. However, it is educational, reminding us that many of the things we get so fired up about and that dominate the culture eventually fade like fashions.
A glaring contrast to the garish, self-serving chaos of the current one
I've noticed Obama can no longer be described in lofty terms for his own sake, so they consistently turn to a "better than Trump" framing to discuss his attributes.
Biden, unable to even withstand such false comparisons, has disappeared.
Much of the art is nice, but its function is that of lipstick on pork.
Good grief! Does every visual encompassing that entire campus have to be pokey, irritating, or brutally depressing? It looks like a dilapidated, heavily-tagged train car.
Oh so the unreadable text is from an Obama speech! Gee what a surprise.
How can we ever miss him if he doesn’t go away.
Imagine if this was actually the Trump library with his speech on the side and everything else identical. I think the right would still find the choices puzzling, but the reception from the left would be quite different. They would probably need the National Guard surrounding the place 24/7.
As the Romans said, "There's no disputing taste."
Ann Althouse earned a BFA from Michigan and she's a talented artist. She thinks much of the artwork in Chicago is good.
I, personally, don't like all the gold that Trump has put all over the White House. But, there's no disputing taste. I agree that it is garish. But, hey, he won the election! I do, however, like many of the portraits he's put on the walls of the White House. The classics.
My question is what does all this artwork have to do with Obama's presidency? Is it a library or an art museum? Is it a distraction from the substance of his two terms?
There was no substance (,spoiler alert)
Obama glorifies himself.
Trump wants to improve DC - A leftist Democrat run high crime shit hole.
In Chicago, "freewheeling tomfoolery" usually involves crime scene tape and a body count.
Thank you for that link. I don't find that art work all that good. None of it would stand the test of time, especially the political buttons. The comments over there are all overwhelmingly gushingly positive, like fashion writers critiquing Michelle Obama's clothing choices.
The whole message of this thing is, “why do you have to do? Why can’t you just be?” No talk about the substance or the context of time in 2008, no exhibits about kids getting good jobs, just some basket ball and calm art. I think it’s trying to be the Met or Kennedy Center for Rap music but I don’t see a large event stage.
I await the policy on entry, are they going to be selective or require tickets on cool nights to keep the crowd tony, or will it become “homeless focused.”
Artworks? Basketball court? Sledding hill? Isn’t this supposed to be a Presidential “Library”? The message seems to be “I don’t have much to show in terms of accomplishments, so, here, distract yourselves with this overly expensive playground”.
And NYT - with all your slow panning close-ups of the artwork… couldn’t you add in some “Ken Burns” music for a background?
What Peachy said.
If the NYTs hacks and the left had any standards, they would only be double standards.
Like the annenberg fund another expensive grift that served none but obamas pals
Carlos slims feeds them such thin gruel
I defy anyone to differentiate between Obama's "library" and a Nazi flaktürme from a distance.
Does anyone actually believe the at looks good? There was very little beauty that I saw: what's inspiring about a political button that says Frybread Power? The piece that looked best is featured in a private dining room. So the masses have progressive kitsch and pretention; the Obamas and their guests get the actual talent.
Btw this is the definition of a cult
Obama could be low key. That made him presentable to people for whom Trump isn't. That doesn't mean that he values art, beauty, and decency. Trump does seem to be striving towards his own idea of beauty, garish and excessive though it may be. Obama wasn't striving for anything more than his own election and reelection. I don't think he was a conspirator dedicated to undermining the country. He was a careerist timeserver, a presentable face for the Chicago-style deal-making going on behind the scenes. The art isn't that bad, though.
And what's the obsession with the Selma speech? I'm sure they're are better Obama speeches. They are trying so hard to make Fetch happen.
He was always trying to undermine institutions in a lower register
Tongue bathing the little racist is not a good look!
I'm thinking of the tiles, which suggested the periodic table to me more than anything connected to Obama, and the skylight, which is visually interesting in spite of the design being based on Obama's speech. The map of Chicago also caught my eye. The tropical lagoon scene with the palms reflected in the water was hotel room art, but not bad for that genre. I didn't like the rest of it.
“It’s a new approach and shows his sensitivity to how a presidency can be reflected in the culture,” said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “This is a president who, from the time he began running through the length of his presidency, loved contemporary culture, spoke about it, was conversant in it and talked in a serious way with people who created it.”
Beschloss is a sycophant. He's the one who was saying Obama's intelligence was "off the charts." His father, a refugee from Nazi Germany, used to contradict him, but I guess he's not around anymore.
Obama "loved contemporary culture" when it came to rappers and basketball players. Was there anything more to it than that? Of course, big cultural players let him put ribbons and medals on them and he did take contemporary novels with him on vacation, but he was a political animal.
There's nothing actually wrong with that, but we judge politicians based on their policies, not on whatever frills they bring or can fake. Jack Kennedy was an enthusiastic golfer (and an even more enthusiastic coxswain, if you catch my drift), but he had to pretend to be a man of culture, intellect, and refinement, because Ike was the golfer. Jackie helped him.
I guess I just don’t appreciate modern art.
Tsk, tsk, Althouse. Your parents spent a lot of money sending you to an out of state university to get a BFA and you claim actually to like that crap Obama has in his carbuncle of a building?
I'm not an Obama fan, but this looks pretty interesting. I'd include it if I were visiting Chicago.
Hahaha. The brutalist architecture is growing on me. Apparently the granite stone is from the New Hampshire and it's called tapestry granite. Exquisite. I really like the painting City of Big Shoulders. I was struck by how the Lakeshore geometry closely mimics the West Coast from the southern tip of California to the northern tip of Washington state.
I also enjoyed how a huge sprawling facility with a giant American style monument built for President Obama screams me me me me while the words say we we we we.
My biggest disappointment is the $30 price of admission.
Technically I think this is filled with contemporary art, not modern art.
Michelle had a 300K job with the UofC Hospital, and she actually did the work: lobbying to keep it from serving the community too much. The museums on the lakeshore are also kept from the community. I am quite sure all the methods normally decried as racist, ACAB, etc, will be used to keep the commmunity from the Obama Library, and no Dem politician or media will say a damn thing. CC, JSM
The comments at the NYT's are unintentionally hilarious. If you ever wondered why the NYT's was so partisan, close-minded, and mediocre, just look at these people.
I sincerely doubt Obama and Michelle give a damn about art. I'm sure Bush cares more about it, since he paints. As for the Clinton's or Biden, good grief. Those kIller-clowns are like most politicians they arent "sensitive souls" or deep thinkers. They're out for power. They want to appear to like art, because its good optics. that's it.
And who cares? I don't need my leaders to care about art. I want them to be good at their jobs.
You know who really cared about art? Stalin and Hitler.
I've seen the shitstain of a building the Obama Presidential Center is. There is not the slightest shred of art, beauty, or decency" about it. It is indeed a "glaring contrast to the"
elegance and grace of Trump's work, be it the Memorial pool or the new East Wing
The Obama Library is a superb contemporary building which will attract international architects, students and visitors for years to come.
It could do for this part of Chicago what Guggenheim Bilbao did for this port in Northern Spain, described as "struggling, polluted industrial city in steep decline, often described as a "post-industrial wasteland" with high unemployment and a tarnished reputation".
Put it on the map.
I've seen the shitstain of a building the Obama Presidential Center is. There is not the slightest shred of "art, beauty, or decency" about it. It is indeed a "glaring contrast to the" elegance and grace of Trump's work, be it the Memorial pool or the new East Wing
Indefinitely Extended Excursion™️ said...
The Obama Library is a superb contemporary building which will attract international architects, students and visitors for years to come.
Only to come and gawk the way people do at a multi-car pileup
How much did rhey steal from the cit8zens of chicago for this
“The Obama Library is a superb contemporary building which will attract international architects, students and visitors for years to come.”
The library is a brutalist nightmare.
ostentation="grandeur and elegance"
Actually, some of the art is not bad.
How you seen how ugly that Brutalist, Obama Presidential Library is? I definitely prefer classical architecture to that.
Tomfoolery or BarrySoetorofoolery, if you like, will far outstrip the Boeing 747-8 aircraft from the Qataris to Trump as a gift, and now worth $800 million, that will never find its way into The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library.
...the approval of the Obama aesthetic is perfectly correlated to the patron's political propinquity...
I am one of those people who does not appreciate most of the art in the Obama Presidential Center. I'm one of those "oddballs" who was thoroughly impressed with the late 1800s German artists that were featured at the Milwaukee Art Museum some years back. Their work was so minute that the paintings could have been mistaken for photographs.
The art is in the spirit of the place — colorful and fun.
"The Obama Foundation Home Court’s design is inspired by two of President Obama’s personal passions – basketball and building community..."
He's Jonesing.
View from the Sky Room--also a dandy spot from which to observe the gunfire on the south side.
Hey old and slow! Be sure to take your picture ID with you cuz they won’t let you in without it!
Some of the abstracts are lovely but that poor black woman singer seems to being tortured by her keyboards instead of making a joyful noise like America's great performers. And the button mural with annoying political slogans in kitsch.
Face it. They are putting lipstick on a pig. Ugliest Presidential library - Ever. Matches his reign as President. Contrast it with Trump’s planned library, which is bold and soars, extolling the country. The purpose of the Obama library is to make money for the grifters, and nothing else. The purpose of the Trump library is to celebrate Trump, of course, but more importantly, the MAGA movement.
"Art and beauty!", said the blind man.
That's one butt-ugly building Obama has built on Chicago Park District land, possible only thru numerous violations of municipal ordinances and land-use restrictions, compounded by fact city taxpayers are largely subsidizing this mega-monument to hubris. Locally its referred to as Obama's trashbin.
I think the only think that can be said about the Obama Library is that it is guaranteed to win an Architecture Award.
If you've considered that giant concrete phallus of an Obama Presidential Library dominating the people of color on Chicago's South Side, you'd have to rethink your premise that Obama knows or cares more than diddly squat about art.
You weren't expecting romanticism, realism, or representational art, were you?
RCOCEAN II said...
"The comments at the NYT's are unintentionally hilarious. If you ever wondered why the NYT's was so partisan, close-minded, and mediocre, just look at these people."
It really is a cult of personality for so many of his supporters.
I remember being shocked...and quite a bit disturbed...at the rapturous expressions on people's faces in Jackson Park the night he won the election. I've never adored any politician, even Ronaldus Magnus, one-tenth as much as Obama's acolytes adored Obama.
747-8 aircraft from the Qataris to Trump as a gift
It was a gift to the United States, you dishonest hack. How could it possibly be a gift to Trump if he'll never get to use it?
In the end, Obama turns out to have as big an ediface complex as Trump ...
Presidential libraries had to be massive to house all the papers. Some managed to look modest, like GW Bush's. Obama's is humongous but manages not to have any of his papers inside.
I think the coverage has been careful not to call this a Presidential Library, rather it's termed a 'Presidential Center'.
With a sledding hill, oh, boy! Now kids can shell out their admission fee and pretend to sled down a pretend hill. I wonder what bottom-feeder came up with that idea.
Now, I understand that admission is free on Tuesdays, otherwise there's a fee. And it's free on Tuesdays only to Illinois residents, who have to prove themselves by presenting a valid government ID. Just like voting, oh, wait.
Now, I wonder what a kid has to present to get it on the free sledding, since they're not old enough to have one, yet. I dunno - maybe their voter registration card?
DemMedia loves ANYTHING Obama. What we get is borderline Swifty fangirls gushing to write another love letter to their BFF.
I'll grant that Obama valued art and beauty, that is the equivalent of saying he valued oxygen, everyone does. But decency? No. This is the man whose primary means of communication was to use straw man arguments in which his political opponents were presented as mass murderers who just hadn't started yet, barbarians who would at any moment but very soon begin shooting their fellow humans randomly. He was not decent. He spoke indecently, but was well-spoken in his indecency.
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