The Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago's Jackson Park is scheduled to open to the public on Juneteenth 2026, with four levels of exhibitions spread across nearly 35,000 square feet. Exhibition design and media work are credited to Ralph Appelbaum Associates and batwin + robin Productions. The museum tells the story of President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, America's first Black president and First Lady, through a narrative built around history, democracy, public service and the capacity of ordinary people to create change.
Four levels, one civic arc
The visitor route is organised into four major exhibition levels: Toward a More Perfect Union, Working for the Common Good, The People's House and We the People. The sequence starts with the nation's founding ideals and its unfinished work, moves through the people, movements, policies, challenges and accomplishments that shaped the Obama presidency, and closes with civic questions the museum frames as urgent for today and tomorrow.
The interpretation draws on artifacts, large-scale and immersive media, storytelling and a mix of hands-on digital and analog interactives. The stated aim is to connect history to action and to present democracy as a living practice shaped by ordinary people working together.
Exhibition highlights
- Power of Words: an 88-foot-tall media canvas combining speech, sound, image, poetry and art to show how words can inspire action and move people toward change.
- Toward a More Perfect Union: an illuminated, prismatic opening gallery that links 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 alongside crowd-sourced campaign objects, immersing visitors in the grassroots movement of 2008.
- Democracy 101: a hands-on civics exhibit that explores how democracy works through approachable interactive experiences intended to build knowledge, confidence and participation.
The presidency and the People's House
Panorama of a Presidency is a media room that surrounds visitors with a behind-the-scenes view of the activities and places that together make up the daily work of the presidency. At a smaller scale, detailed miniature White House rooms offer a playful, intimate look at how the Obamas opened the residence through traditions, celebrations, performances and public programs. A further collection, Life in the White House Artifacts, gathers fashion, state gifts and sports memorabilia, presented as evidence of an approach the museum describes as open, inclusive, personal and reflective of American diversity and vibrancy.
Interaction, art and access
Imagine Your Impact runs as a recurring interactive thread across all levels of the museum and culminates in a shared media experience built around a large-scale digital art commission, inviting visitors to see how individual actions join together to create collective change. Contemporary artwork is woven throughout the building: Norman Teague designed custom benches, and commissioned works by Jeffrey Gibson, Jules Julien and María Magdalena Campos-Pons add what the museum describes as layered visual expressions of identity and hope.
Inclusive design is treated as foundational rather than supplementary. The museum says the experience is built for visitors of all ages and abilities, integrating tactile stations and replicas, captioning, ASL interpretation, audio description, assistive listening, clear wayfinding and interactive opportunities for participation.
Framing the legacy
The museum places the Obamas' journey inside a broader American civic narrative rooted in Chicago's South Side, 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. The intended takeaway, according to the institution, is a deeper understanding of the Obamas' legacy alongside a renewed sense of visitors' own agency in the ongoing work of democracy at home and abroad.