Coming Soon to Your Neighborhood: The Obama Portraits
Since their unveiling in 2018, the official portraits of president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have been recognized as shining examples of both artistic excellence and historic documentation. In 2021, for the first time, these paintings will leave their home at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. and travel to five museums across the United States. You may even be able to see them in your own neighborhood.
The paintings’ journey will start at the Art Institute of Chicago (June 18-Aug. 15, 2021) and then move to the Brooklyn Museum (Aug. 27-Oct. 24, 2021), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Nov. 5-Jan. 2, 2022), the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (Jan. 14-March 13, 2022), before concluding at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (March 25-May 30, 2022).
“I have to give credit to Anne Pasternak at the Brooklyn Museum,” the National Portrait Gallery’s director, Kim Sajet, told Artnet News. “She rang me within a couple of weeks within the unveiling and said, ‘When can they come to our place?’ We hadn’t thought about touring them until then.”
After making the decision to tour the paintings, Sajet chose locations based on their importance to either the Obama family or to Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, who painted President Obama and Michelle Obama’s portraits, respectively. Chicago is where the Obamas met and started their family, and where the President began his political career. The portraits will then travel to Brooklyn, where Wiley lives and works, and onward to Los Angeles, where he was born. Atlanta is Sherald’s hometown and, finally, Houston was chosen as one of the most diverse cities in its part of the country, according to National Portrait Gallery curator Dorothy Moss.
“This tour is an opportunity for audiences in different parts of the country to witness how portraiture can engage people,” said Sajet told The Washington Post. “You can use these portraits as a portal to all sorts of conversations.”
Indeed, these portraits have already prompted many national conversations. Sherald and Wiley are the first African American artists commissioned by the NPG to paint official portraits of the president and first lady, and these paintings stand out among more traditional works. Notably, the president is depicted shrouded by vibrant green leaves and flowers, and the former first lady is painted in greyscale, with a focus on her billowing, modern gown.
In contrast to the “academic” presidential portraits in the gallery, the Obamas’ portraits are more “contemporary,” Moss states on the gallery’s website. “These portraits aren’t just important historical documents. They’re important to art history in that they have pushed portraiture in a new direction.”
To date, four million people have visited the Obama portraits at the NPG. And Moss wants even more people to see the works. “We wanted to be sure we shared the portraits with diverse audiences across the country, […] especially young people,” she said. “The Obamas really wanted these portraits to be for future generations.”
Accessibility is also being taken into account. As the NPG is a branch of the Smithsonian, and therefore does not charge admission, the gallery is asking other museums on the tour to provide some admission gratis, even if that means only “a number of free days,” Sajet said.
This idea has been well received. James Rondeau, the director of the Art Institute of Chicago, told The Washington Post that his museum plans to “radically expand free hours for Chicagoans. We want to make sure everyone who wants to see these iconic portraits will be able to. I very much hope and expect we will be in the happy business of managing long lines.”
While you may have to navigate some “long lines,” visiting these historic portraits will certainly be worth the wait.
As Moss said, “There’s nothing like seeing the work of art in person.”
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