Njideka Akunyili Crosby paints the Obamas

The Obama Foundation has revealed the first official portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama together, a large-scale painting by Nigerian-born artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby that will hang in the lobby of the Obama Presidential Center when the Chicago campus opens to the public on Friday.

The portrait, The Obamas: Springing Forth, depicts the couple using a photo-transfer process that combines painted figures with images lifted from photographs and printed material. Akunyili Crosby, a 2017 MacArthur fellow now based in Los Angeles, built the composition from a photo she took of them.

In the work, Michelle Obama sits cross-legged in front of her husband, who is perched on a desk, slightly angled toward her. The arches of the window behind them echo the Oval Office, while the view centers on Michelle’s South Side childhood home.

The artist embedded references to the couple's public and private lives throughout the work, including the Charles Alston bust of Martin Luther King Jr. that sat in the Oval Office during Obama's presidency, faded photographs of the couple embracing and a depiction of the 1963 March on Washington.

She also worked in plants of personal significance, including okra and coral hibiscus, and a nod to the four combined Grammy Awards the Obamas won for narrating the audiobooks of their memoirs.

"I wanted to make these decisions that tapped into those memories, so when you saw this, it felt familiar," Akunyili Crosby told the Obamas in a video shared to social media on Monday.

In the video, the former president stands before the canvas to “soak it in.”

"Oh my god, you got everything," Michelle Obama said, embracing the artist. "You know how long I've been waiting for this woman to do something with and for me? I mean, we did it!"

The portrait is among the final group of major commissions for the center, announced by the foundation on April 9. Akunyili Crosby joins María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Jeffrey Gibson, Rashid Johnson, Hugo McCloud, Martin Puryear, Lorna Simpson and Norman Teague in that group.

Those artists join 22 previously commissioned practitioners — among them Mark Bradford, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Maya Lin, Julie Mehretu, Carrie Mae Weems and Idris Khan — whose works are spread across the campus. The commissions are curated by Virginia Shore of Shore Art Advisory.

The Obama Presidential Center, an $850 million campus in Jackson Park on Chicago's South Side that has been nicknamed the "Obamalisk," spans 19.3 acres and includes a museum, a branch of the Chicago Public Library and outdoor gathering spaces.

An invitation-only grand opening ceremony is set for Thursday, followed by a free public weekend June 19 through 21. The museum opens Friday, timed to Juneteenth.

Stories like this take time, documents and a commitment to public transparency. Please support independent arts journalism by subscribing to Urgent Matter and supporting our work directly.