RISD Artists Among Contributors Shaping Soon-to-Open Obama Presidential Center

When the Obama Presidential Center opens on Juneteenth, visitors will be greeted by Uprising of the Sun, a vibrant, 83-foot painted glass window by MacArthur Award-winning artist and RISD alum Julie Mehretu MFA 97 PR/PT. “I wanted to honor Chicago’s history and President Obama’s legacy by telling a story about how change happens,” says Mehretu. Inspired by President Obama’s remarks at the 50th anniversary of the marches from Selma to Montgomery, the abstract piece will grace the north façade of the center’s museum building.

“Julie learned at a young age how access to public space can help shape and affect people’s lives,” says President Obama. “For her to be a part of what we hope will be a transformative institution that will be unique in how it brings so many different people, ideas, and resources together is a wonderful opportunity for us.”

Mehretu—who will be presented an honorary degree at RISD’s Commencement 2026 ceremony and will also deliver the keynote address—is one of more than 20 artists commissioned to create work for the 19.3-acre Presidential Center campus, seven of whom have ties to RISD. Also making inspirational work for the center are alums Spencer Finch MFA 89 SC and Jenny Holzer MFA 77 PT/HD 03, honorary degree recipients María Magdalena Campos-Pons HD 25, Theaster Gates, Jr. HD 19, and Nick Cave HD 22 as well as Associate Professor of Printmaking and Graduate Program Director Tyanna J. Buie, whose 12x30-foot print Be the Change! has been installed in the lobby of the Forum Building.

Buie’s piece features hand-applied ink with screen-printed imagery from President Obama’s 2008 election centered on hope, change, and the power of civic participation. The commission was inspired by her personal experience as a young adult participating in Chicago’s annual Bud Billiken Parade, where she stood alongside a group of Obama for Senate supporters.

“That is how I became an activist,” Buie recalls, “and then I met Obama when he was running for senator in Chicago in 2005, when I was an undergraduate student. His energy was mesmerizing! There are so many ways you can make your voice heard.”

Always dedicated to sharing opportunities and expertise with students, Buie enlisted the help of recent RISD grad Joanna Booth MFA 24 PR and current student Daniella Pozo BRDD 26 PR last summer as she began working on the huge piece on campus. The hardest part, she notes, was creating the colorful background over which she layered scanned newspaper print images purchased online as well as staged photorealistic foreground images such as a hand holding a megaphone.

Conceptual artist Spencer Finch drew inspiration from even earlier in Obama’s life, creating a colorful wall installation out of tile called To Disappear Enhances (Memory Landscapes) that evokes memories of the former president’s formative years from such locations as Honolulu, Jakarta, Chicago, and Nairobi. The colors for each location were selected by Obama from a large palette to represent specific personal memories.

“The piece aims to transform the historical landscape and internal portraits of the president’s memories, tapping the space between abstraction and representation and connecting his world experience with the experiences of the visitors,” Finch explains. “It is my hope that this artwork will slowly reveal its meaning and specificity as viewers spend time with it.” 

Fellow alum David Wiseman 03 FD, who majored in Furniture Design at RISD, contributed one of his nature-inspired, bronze and porcelain Radial Branch chandeliers to the center, and Jenny Holzer—whose text-based installations and light projections have been transforming public spaces around the world for more than 40 years—is working on a layered painting commissioned for the center’s museum. The piece uses writing sourced from declassified FBI files on civil rights activists, including the Freedom Riders, whose courage and endurance she sought to memorialize. In effect, it turns instruments of surveillance into a memorial to the remarkable courage of the nonviolent 1960s activists. 

“I rely heavily on content to get me by,” Holzer said in a recent article published by Interview Magazine, “and for this piece, I went to formerly secret documents. One was about the courageous and effective Freedom Riders.”

In the same article, Nick Cave discusses This Land, Shared Sky, the multimedia textile installation the Obama Presidential Center commissioned him and collaborator Marie Watt to create for the museum lobby. Made with beaded nets embedded with sculptural jingle elements, the piece merges Indigenous and Black traditions in a celebration of movement, sound, and shared resilience. 

Fellow honorary degree recipients María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Theaster Gates, Jr. are completing Still Holding the Scent of Flowers and a portrait of Black life, respectively, for the center’s June opening. Campos-Pons, who earned a MacArthur Award in 2023, created an installation that combines floral and edible plant forms and references Michelle Obama’s food and health advocacy as first lady. Gates made a massive frieze featuring images from the now-defunct Johnson Publishing Company (publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines) that will hang inside the center’s Forum Building. 

“My hope is to ground the power of these visual histories in a new context, reminding us of the collective resolve that shapes our communities,” says Gates. “At a time when artists are increasingly playing a critical role in protecting memory and contributing to the democratic ideals that continue to shape who we are and what we strive to become, it is deeply meaningful to contribute to this historic space.”

Simone Solondz
April 30, 2026