Obama Presidential Center Announces Final Cohort of Commissions Ahead of June Opening, Including María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Lorna Simpson
The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago announced a final cohort of eight artist commissions ahead of the campus’s opening in June, according to ARTnews. The newly named artists are Njideka Akunyili Crosby, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Hugo McCloud, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson, and Norman Teague, with works placed across the 19.3-acre South Side site. Highlights include Crosby’s portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama for the Main Hall, Gibson’s suite of 17 prints referencing Obama campaign buttons, Campos-Pons’s mixed-media installation Still Holding the Scent of Flowers recreating the destroyed White House Rose Garden near an Oval Office exhibit, and Puryear’s John Lewis tribute Bending the Arc, described as a 34-foot-long beam carved in wood, 3D-scanned, and fabricated in stainless steel. With these additions joining 22 previously announced artists, the center will feature 30 new works in total, alongside commissions by figures including Carrie Mae Weems, Julie Mehretu, Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, and the late Richard Hunt.
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