Reportedly, Barack Obama—is there no end to his god-like talents?—all but designed every inch of his library, which isn’t really a library, himself. It’s actually called the “Obama Presidential Center.” How could we expect less of “The Lightbringer,” “The One?”
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Graphic: X Post
The oddly shaped monolith has been controversial from the start. DEI hiring led to labor confrontations and construction faults that delayed the project and increased the cost of the building and surrounding complex to $850 million, and public condemnation of the design has been near-universal. One would expect The Guardian, a left-wing publication, to be complimentary. It’s not, and when you’ve lost the Guardian…
The Guardian notes it was FDR who began the tradition of presidential libraries in 1940. Since then, every POTUS has tried to outdo the others in size and expense, a tradition that will likely be interrupted with Joe Biden. The grandly titled Biden Library Foundation has admitted it expects to raise only about $11.3 million of its $200 million goal by 2027. Perhaps Obama was hoping to overshadow the eventual library of the man who has done so much to undo the damage he caused? If so, trying to outdo Donald Trump will be a fools’ errand.
The Guardian’s tone is evident early in its article:
Graphic: X Post
Above us, sheer walls of granite erupt from the ground at a steep angle, before tapering to form a chiselled 70-metre-high monolith. It looks hewn and cleft, towering over the 19-acre campus like a stocky, truncated obelisk. Rising above the low-rise, low-income neighbourhood, the building has an ominous presence, its mostly windowless heft recalling a menacing sci-fi headquarters, with small chamfered openings suggesting portals from where drones might be launched, or lasers fired. Some have compared it to a flak tower, others to a “Klingon prison”. If it is a beacon of hope, it seems to be one that has been fortified at all costs against the present regime, a defensive bunker to protect its fragile values from siege.
K’plah! Fortunately, for hordes of worshipful patrons, plastic models of the edifice will be available in the gift center for a mere $40 dollars.
Chicago locals aren’t impressed with the confusing text wrapped around the top levels of the building:
The lines, from his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, now form a sun-shading screen at the top of the tower’s south-west corner. “YOU ARE AMERICA,” you can just about make out, before the words dissolve into an illegible sea of letters. “I don’t know why it’s in Latin,” one confused local resident told me.
I’m sure this is true:
At some points, the Obamamania gets a bit much – there is even an Obama tulip variety in the garden, a gift from the Dutch. Numerous art commissions help to relieve the pervasive greyness, from Mark Bradford’s riotous map of Chicago in the atrium, to Julie Mehretu’s colourful stained glass window, which beams out from the northern facade at night.
The Guardian isn’t particularly impressed with the “Sky Room:”
An elevator finally whisks you past a private presidential suite to the “sky room” at the tower’s summit, where panoramic windows frame the city, beneath a momentous white pyramid-shaped ceiling – the pharaonic chamber at last! It was intended to have a celestial quality, with blue words by artist Idris Khan tumbling from the sky. But, in a major blunder, the pyramid doesn’t culminate in a skylight, but a solid white plasterboard ceiling – perhaps an unintended metaphor for barriers that must still be overcome.
From this elevated eyrie, looking out through the big concrete letters, you get a good sense of how the Obama centre fits into the neighbourhood, and why it has been quite so controversial. Down below stretches Jackson Park, laid out in 1871 by Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park, part of which was ceded for the presidential complex. The decision to build on a public park sparked furious lawsuits, but the foundation insists that the project has resulted in more parkland and more trees, thanks to the removal of a road. Still, the symbolic land-grab struck a nerve, when there are so many vacant lots nearby.
Perhaps that vacancy is symbolic of Obama’s presidency and Obama himself? Google “Obama halo” and one finds innumerable photos of Obama in divine poses replete with halos. Drooled over for his “soaring rhetoric,” virtually no one can recall anything he said—thus the letters?–and The Affordable Care Act—Obamacare—quickly turned out to be anything but.
He clearly wanted something that said: “look upon me ye mighty and despair,” something that could not be ignored because it jars the eye and sensibilities of unsuspecting viewers. In that, he has succeeded, but I suspect Americans will be able to stay away in droves. Even the Guardian, it seems, has had quite enough of Barack Obama, as Americans have had enough of both Obamas.
How can we miss them, in their post-presidential years, if they won’t go away?
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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