NEW YORK, NY.- Sean Kelly announced that Lindsay Adams, Idris Khan, and Hugo McCloud have been commissioned to make new work for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, IL. Opening in June 2026, the Obama Presidential Center will establish public art as a central pillar of its mission, commissioning more than 25 new site-specific works across its 19-acre campus. Featuring monumental sculptures, murals, and immersive installations, this bold initiative underscores President and Mrs. Obama’s belief in the capacity of art to connect communities, inspire civic engagement, and foster a shared sense of humanity.
Lindsay Adams’s practice explores abstraction as a space for interior reflection, using layered surfaces and gestural mark-making to convey emotion, memory, and lived experience. Her work, for the Obama Presidential Center, entitled Weary Blues, after Langston Hughes’ iconic poem, is a meditation on resilience, beauty, and the power of abstract forms, and carries forward a lineage of Black creative expression that holds space for both weariness and transcendence.
Idris Khan’s practice explores densely layered imagery that moves between abstraction and figuration, evoking themes of history, collective memory, and the collapse of time into a single moment. His work Sky of Hope is a monumental site-specific painting in the Museum’s Skyroom. Radiating from the apex of the ceiling, the work employs thousands of hand-stamped words from President Obama’s Selma speech honoring Civil Rights leaders, which are also permanently inscribed on the building’s façade, will create a contemplative environment inviting reflection on democracy, resilience, and the enduring power of the public voice.
Hugo McCloud’s plastic paintings continue his exploration of migration, global commerce, and the ecological systems that bind these narratives together. Known for transforming single-use plastic bags into richly layered compositions, McCloud traces the movement of people and goods through scenes of flora, markets, and everyday labor, his commission for the Obama Presidential center, builds on themes of movement and exchange in a large-scale wall installation. In this work, McCloud charts President Obama’s history, through significant locations, from Honolulu to Chicago, the work unfolds across a topographical map of the Center’s campus, reflecting on how migration and place shape personal and collective identity and ultimately history.
These commissions reflect the Obama Presidential Center’s commitment to art as a vital force within civic life, one that honors history while inviting dialogue about the future. Through distinct yet complementary approaches, Adams, Khan, and McCloud create works for reflection, connection, and shared experience, embodying the Center’s vision of art as a catalyst for community, memory, and a purposeful future.
