The Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago’s Jackson Park is opening to the public on Juneteenth 2026. The museum occupies four exhibition levels and nearly 35,000 square feet, and its program presents the story of President and Mrs. Obama, America’s first Black president and First Lady, through history, democracy, public service and the power of people to create change.
The exhibition team includes Ralph Appelbaum Associates and batwin + robin Productions. Across the four levels, the museum explores the promise and complexity of American democracy, the experiences that shaped the Obamas, the work of the Obama presidency, and the shared responsibility of building a more perfect union.
Four connected exhibition levels
The visitor route is organized 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 begins with the nation’s founding ideals and unfinished work, moves through the people, movements, policies, challenges and accomplishments associated with the Obama presidency, and ends with civic questions facing the present and future.
Rather than treating democracy as a fixed system, the museum presents it as a living practice shaped by ordinary people working together. It uses artifacts, large-scale and immersive media, storytelling, and hands-on digital and analog interactives to link historical material with civic participation.
Immersive media and campaign history
Among the highlighted galleries is Power of Words, an 88-foot-tall media canvas combining speech, sound, image, poetry and art. The installation is intended to show how words can inspire action and move people toward change. Toward a More Perfect Union serves as an illuminated, prismatic opening gallery, connecting founding ideals and contradictions with the people and movements that have pushed American democracy toward greater justice and inclusion.
The Yes We Can Campaign gallery is circular and features a panoramic media installation with volunteer voices, alongside crowd-sourced campaign objects. The display places visitors inside the grassroots movement of 2008. Democracy 101 offers a hands-on civics exhibit designed to help visitors explore how democracy works through 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 make up the daily work of the presidency. At a smaller scale, detailed miniature White House rooms offer an intimate look at how the Obamas opened the People’s House through traditions, celebrations, performances and public programs.
Life in the White House Artifacts brings together fashion, state gifts and sports memorabilia. The collection is presented as evidence of how the Obamas made the White House feel open, inclusive, personal and reflective of America’s diversity and vibrancy while upholding and expanding traditions.
Participation, art and access
Imagine Your Impact is a recurring interactive thread across all museum levels. It culminates in a shared media experience and a large-scale digital art commission that invites visitors to consider how individual actions can combine to create collective change. Contemporary artwork appears throughout the museum, including custom-designed benches by Norman Teague and commissioned works by Jeffrey Gibson, Jules Julien and María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
Inclusive design is treated as foundational. The museum is designed to support visitors of all ages and abilities, with tactile stations, replicas, captioning, ASL interpretation, audio description, assistive listening, clear wayfinding and interactive opportunities for participation.
The museum frames the Obamas’ journey within a wider American civic narrative rooted in Chicago’s South Side, shaped by national and global movements for justice, and carried forward by people working in their communities, including participants in the Obama Foundation’s Global Programs. The intended visitor takeaway is a deeper understanding of the Obamas’ legacy and a renewed sense of individual agency in the ongoing work of democracy.