- This is one of a pair of reviews debating the Obama Presidential Center, which opened on June 19, 2026, in Chicago. Read the companion piece by Morley Musick here.
THE LIBRARY, TO BEGIN WITH, is and isn’t a library. On Juneteenth 2026, after more than a decade of planning, design, fundraising, community organizing, and lawsuits, the Obama Presidential Center (OPC) debuted as the first of its kind to not include a library of a president’s papers. (Instead, documents relating to the Obama administration can be consulted using the National Archives’ online portal.) It is also the first of its kind to include a public library branch. This rebalancing of priorities from historic preservation to public service is remarkable, even as it has mostly gone unnoticed amid the largely negative accord in the lay and art press.
Political memory of course depends upon the federally mandated preservation of official documents, but it depends even more upon public cultural experience: rituals of commemoration; the sharing of images; the correspondence b…
