Rendering of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu – Women’s Garden View, Obama Presidential Center Museum Building. | Photo: Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Julie Mehretu Studio
WHEN THE OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER opens in 2026, visitors will be greeted by the work of Julie Mehretu. Working with glass for the first time, the renowned artist produced a multi-story painted window, a towering beacon that anchors the exterior facade of the Obama Presidential Center’s Museum Building.
Titled “Uprising of the Sun,” the 83-foot-tall window was installed on the north facade of the museum over the weekend. From inside the building, the color-drenched artwork and views of the expansive landscape beyond can be seen as visitors ride the escalators traversing from one floor to the next.
More than 20 original artworks will be central to the visitor experience at the Obama Presidential Center, a 19.3-acre campus sited within Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago. Envisioned as a “global center for change,” the campus will feature public plazas and a variety of programming, gathering, and creative spaces, including a museum, auditorium, restaurant, athletic facility, recording studio, fruit and vegetable garden, and a branch of the Chicago Public Library.
“Book Bird,” a sculpture by Richard Hunt (1935-2023) will be featured in the Library Reading Garden and Maya Lin’s “Seeing Through the Universe” sculpture will be displayed in the Ann Dunham Water Garden, which is named in honor of President Obama’s mother. Mehretu’s window is the third artist commission announced by the Obama Foundation and her work was the first to be installed.
“I was completely overwhelmed and honored by the possibility of doing a project for the Obama Presidential Center—not only because of the awe I have for the president, but also because it’s this creative space that’s very much alive,” Mehretu said in a video about the project.
“What I think is really unique about this project is it’s not just a presidential library. There’s an ambition to this project that is similar to the ambition of his presidency. It’s a cultural center for young activists and artists—a living, breathing institution of futurity.”
“I was completely overwhelmed and honored by the possibility of doing a project for the Obama Presidential Center—not only because of the awe I have for the president, but also because it’s this creative space that’s very much alive.” — Julie Mehretu
Sept. 7, 2024: Julie Mehretu on site at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago during the installation of her commissioned artwork, an 83-foot-tall painted glass window titled “Uprising of the Sun.” | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
BORN IN ETHIOPIA and raised in Michigan, Mehretu lives and works in New York. She makes grand-scaled abstract works informed by history, politics, music, and literature. One of the most critically acclaimed artists working today, she describes her work as highly abstracted articulations of contemporary experience, social behavior, and the psychogeography of space.
For the Obama project, Mehretu employed an array of techniques, including hand painting, freehand airbrushing, ceramic melting colors, and tape masking. The artist collaborated with Michael Mayer of Franz Mayer of Munich on the glass fabrication. Remarks President Barack Obama delivered in 2015 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the 50th anniversary of the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., inspired her concept.
“As I was thinking more about how the building will actually have this excerpt from your speech in Selma as part of the narrative of the building, I started looking at historic photographs of the bridge, including the photograph at the 50th anniversary of you, and Mrs. Obama, and many others,” Mehretu said to President Obama in the video.
“All of that history is a part of this painting, but, within the abstraction, there’s a space for something else to happen in terms of the imagination. And there’s a certain kind of freedom in that space.” CT
FIND MORE about the Obama Foundation
FIND MORE about the Obama Presidential Center, the campus, and its museum
FIND MORE about Julie Mehretu on Instagram and at Marian Goodman Gallery
FIND MORE Julie Mehretu will be in conversation with Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem at the New Yorker Festival on Oct. 26, 2024, in New York
President Barack Obama and artist Julie Mehretu discuss her background and concept for the commissioned artwork, a painted window installed on the facade of the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building. | Video by The Obama Foundation
“Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu is composed of 35 abstract, painted glass panels. The artist collaborated with Michael Mayer of Franz Mayer of Munich on the fabrication. Mayer’s family has been working with glass for five generations. Today the studio collaborates with an international slate of artists and keeps an office in New York. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Installation of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu at the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building in Chicago. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Installation of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu at the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building in Chicago. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Installation of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu at the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building in Chicago. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Installation of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu at the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building in Chicago. Shown, at right, Julie Mehretu observes the installation from the interior of the museum building. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Installation of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu at the Obama Presidential Center Museum Building in Chicago. | Courtesy The Obama Foundation
Julie Mehretu: “One of the really beautiful things about this installation is that whether you’re climbing the escalator, or just standing still, you’re kind of moving through this and experiencing all of these different elements of abstraction.” Shown, Rendering of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu – Interior View. | Photo: Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Julie Mehretu Studio
The Obama Presidential Center campus is designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects with landscape design by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Shown, Rendering of “Uprising of the Sun” by Julie Mehretu – Campus View, Obama Presidential Center Museum Building. | Photo: Lamar Johnson Collaborative and Julie Mehretu Studio
BOOKSHELF
“Julie Mehretu: Ensemble” documents the artist’s recent exhibition at Palazzo Grassi in Venice, Italy. “Julie Mehretu” was published in 2019 to accompany the artist’s mid-career survey organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Julie Mehretu: Grey Paintings” was published to coincide with “Hoodnyx, Voodoo and Stelae,” the artist’s 2016 exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery and features an essay by artist Glenn Ligon. “Julie Mehretu: Drawings and Monotypes” documents an exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge gallery. Also consider, “Julie Mehretu – Liminal Squared” and “Julie Mehretu: A Universal History of Everything and Nothing,” among other publications.
