The Obama Presidential Center Museum will open to the public on Juneteenth 2026 in Chicago’s Jackson Park, with four levels of exhibits spanning nearly 35,000 square feet. The museum will present the story of President and Mrs. Obama, America’s first Black president and First Lady, through a narrative focused on history, democracy, public service, and the power of people to create change.
Visitors will move through four major exhibition levels: Toward a More Perfect Union, Working for the Common Good, The People’s House, and We the People. The galleries trace a path from the nation’s founding ideals and unfinished work through the people, movements, policies, challenges, and accomplishments of the Obama presidency, and toward civic questions facing the present and future. The museum uses artifacts, large-scale and immersive media, storytelling, and hands-on digital and analog interactives to present democracy as a living practice shaped by ordinary people working together.
Exhibition highlights
Among the featured spaces is 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 is described as an illuminated, prismatic opening gallery that connects the nation’s founding ideals and contradictions to the people and movements that have pushed American democracy toward greater justice and inclusion.
The Yes We Can Campaign circular gallery will use a panoramic media installation with volunteer voices and crowd-sourced campaign objects to immerse visitors in the grassroots movement of 2008. Democracy 101 is a hands-on civics exhibit designed to help visitors explore how democracy works through approachable, interactive experiences intended to build knowledge, confidence, and participation.
Panorama of a Presidency is a sweeping media room that surrounds visitors with a behind-the-scenes view of the activities and places that 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 People’s House through traditions, celebrations, performances, and public programs. Life in the White House Artifacts will display fashion, state gifts, and sports memorabilia, showing how the Obamas sought to make the White House feel open, inclusive, personal, and reflective of America’s diversity and vibrancy while upholding and expanding traditions.
Imagine Your Impact is a recurring interactive thread across all levels, culminating in a shared media experience with a large-scale digital art commission. It invites visitors to see how individual actions can join together to create collective change. Contemporary artwork is woven throughout the museum, including Norman Teague’s custom-designed benches and commissioned works by Jeffrey Gibson, Jules Julien, and María Magdalena Campos-Pons that bring layered visual expressions of identity and hope into the experience.
Inclusive design is a foundational part of the project. The museum is designed to support visitors of all ages and abilities and integrates accessible, multisensory experiences including tactile stations and replicas, captioning, ASL interpretation, audio description, assistive listening, clear wayfinding, and interactive opportunities for participation. The exhibition project credits Ralph Appelbaum Associates and batwin + robin Productions.
At its heart, the museum frames the Obama story within 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 museum’s stated aim is for visitors to leave with a deeper understanding of the Obamas’ legacy and a renewed sense of their own agency in the ongoing work of democracy at home and abroad.