Where Words Linger and Art Speaks: My time at the Obama Center
My Hauser family and friends. Despite my absence during this visit, I love the pic
Tickets to tour the Obama Center’s museum in Chicago are currently sold out through the end of November. Thanks, however, to the diligence and resourcefulness of Steve and Beverly Engel, Jim and I were able to visit the campus with them last Sunday.
The Engels and son Zack were our touring partners
A lump in my throat, as I fought back tears, accompanied me for most of the three hours and five floors we visited. The power of words dominates the museum. His words:
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
The contrast between his inspirational messages of hope and leadership with the current administration’s narcissistic petulance and bullying, is jarring.
Words from his 2015 speech, “You Are America”, honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, embellish the top of the obelisk. You can glimpse some of the concrete words from the Sky room as well as hundreds of hand stamped words from this speech on the ceiling.
Everything about this center is intentional and laudatory of often overlooked artists and thinkers. I had to narrow my focus, as we had hours, not days to absorb the memorabilia, films, and artwork. So, I chose the art.
“Bending the Arc” a sculpture carved from a thirty-four-foot beam and transformed into a curved stainless steel arch references Martin Luther King’s words, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, greets visitors in the John Lewis Plaza.
An enterprising photographer pretended the bronze versions of Barack and Michelle Obama were walking his dogs.
My favorite piece is a collage-like painting entitled, “The Obamas: Springing Forth”. Photo transfers of images from their lives are layered in the painting, creating texture-like patterns in their clothing and foliage.
A hanging sculpture entitled, “This Land, Shared Sky”, is made from pony beads and steel jingles. The jingles were made from curled tobacco can lids during the 1916 flu pandemic, becoming healing instruments through the sound of the jingle dance.
“City of the Big Shoulders” is based on a Carl Sandberg poem, “Chicago” and depicts the city as a living map shaped by history, labor, and time.
A Pink and red tambourine installation is a nod to the 2017 women’s march and celebrates women activists in the civil rights movement.
A fierce rainstorm prevented our five-some from exploring the rest of the campus. Probably better because I don’t think I could have absorbed much else. But I live only an hour away and I’ll be back especially when I need a dose of inspiration and a sense of community and connection.