The Obama Presidential Center will debut in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side with a grand opening celebration from June 18 to 21; it will open to the public beginning June 19, coinciding with the Juneteenth federal holiday. On May 6, the Obama Foundation, which shepherded the construction and will manage the center, will make tickets available for visiting the Museum Building, and most of the rest of the Obama Presidential Center and its 19.3-acre campus will be free and open to all. In addition to numerous on-site gathering spaces, the center also infuses events with plenty of “Yes We Can” energy.
In a video message that accompanied the announcement for the grand opening celebration, former President Barack Obama says, “It is easy to look around right now and feel like the challenges we face are simply too big. But hope is not about ignoring the hard stuff. It is that thing inside us that insists something better awaits if we are willing to work for it. Here, on the South Side of Chicago, hope is getting a permanent home. … This is not a monument to the past; it is a living destination for people who refuse to accept the status quo.”
Rentable meeting spaces at the Obama Presidential Center include the Museum Building, which features the 500-person-capacity, three-story Hope and Change Lobby, plus the Sky Room and Sky Room Vista, overlooking Lake Michigan and the city. Planners can opt to buy out the entire museum. Also available are Home Court, a multipurpose NBA-regulation basketball court that hosts up to 999 for a reception; the 58,000-square-foot Great Lawn outside; and the outdoor Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit and Vegetable Garden atop the center’s Chicago Public Library branch, available for elegant dinners of up to 60 attendees. Planners might also consider the Elie Wiesel Auditorium with theater seating or the light-filled Hadiya Pendleton Atrium, which includes a raised platform and available theatrical lighting. Both gathering spaces are in the center’s Forum Building.
Perhaps most remarkable about the center is the architecture of the building itself, with the Museum Building’s Sky Room looking out through huge concrete letters etched into the building. The letters form the former president’s words from his March 7, 2015, speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the 50th anniversary of the first of the civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1965. At the top of the Obama Presidential Center, it says, “You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”
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