Obama Foundation Announces Installations of works by Spencer Finch and Lindsay Adams

Announcements

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Apr 22, 2025

The artist Joseph Seigenthaler in his studio

Via PR

CHICAGO – The Obama Foundation announced today it will soon be installing works by two notable American artists Spencer Finch (NY) and Lindsay Adams, an upcoming graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, at the Obama Presidential Center. Their installations are among 25 site-specific works from a range of luminary to emerging artists that will be featured at the Center as part of a broad commitment to elevating public art across its campus.

“From their earliest days in the White House, President and Mrs. Obama celebrated the power of art to inspire change,” said Valerie Jarrett, CEO of the Obama Foundation. “We are proud to continue their legacy by featuring unique artwork from Spencer Finch, Lindsay Adams, and other extraordinary artists at the Obama Presidential Center. We look forward to serving as a place to activate the imagination of visitors from Chicago and around the world, and inspire them to bring change home to their communities.”

“Both Spencer and Lindsay bring a strong sense of place and purpose to their work that accomplishes President Obama’s goal for the arts on campus: to spark conversations about the world as it is and the world as it ought to be,” said Louise Bernard, the Obama Presidential Center Museum Director. “We look forward to working with Lindsay and Spencer in the coming weeks as they join us onsite to install their work, and sharing their pieces with visitors next year.”

Spencer Finch

Spencer Finch is best known for his moving installation at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum: “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” In that piece, Finch used 2,983 individual watercolor tile squares to honor the victims of the attacks and symbolize the idea of memory.

Finch’s piece for the Obama Center will similarly incorporate memory, color and a sense of place. Drawing on inspiration from President Obama’s autobiography “Dreams from My Father,” Finch will showcase a tile wall mural installation entitled “To Disappear Enhances – (Memory Landscapes)” that evokes memories of places from the President’s formative years, including Honolulu, Jakarta, Chicago, and Nairobi. The colors for each location were selected personally by President Obama from a large palette to represent a specific personal memory from that place. Measuring 12’ x 66’8”, Finch’s mural of tiles made of fired and glazed clay will be on display to welcome visitors in the lower level lobby of the Center’s Forum building.

“It is an honor to create a new piece for the Obama Presidential Center that speaks directly to the earliest life experiences of President Obama,” said Spencer Finch. “It is my hope that this artwork will slowly reveal its meaning and specificity as viewers spend time with it. The piece aims to transform into the historical landscape and internal portraits of the President's memories, connecting his world experience with the experiences of the visitors.”

Lindsay Adams

Visitors to the Center’s café will also have the opportunity to experience “Weary Blues” – a meditation on resilience, beauty, and the power of abstract forms from Chicago-based artist Lindsay Adams, currently a graduate student at SAIC. Her 24 x 24 inch painting, originally created in 2024, will be translated into silkscreen panels on fabric. The work is titled after Langston Hughes’ iconic poem and carries forward a lineage of Black creative expression that holds space for both weariness and transcendence.

“It is my privilege to translate ‘Weary Blues’ for the Obama Presidential Center,” said Lindsay Adams. “The piece will become part of a shared environment at the Center’s café – an atmosphere for gathering, reflection, and rest – extending the piece’s emotional tenor into a communal space rooted in legacy, resilience, and imagination. It’s an honor to contribute to the rich tradition of Black artistic expression on Chicago’s South Side and to help carry that creative legacy forward.”

Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of more than 25 artists who will have original pieces on display to the public at the Obama Presidential Center.

Last fall, crews installed Julie Mehretu’s 83-foot-high abstract painted glass window in the Museum Building, which is visible now to visitors of Jackson Park.
The Foundation also previously unveiled plans for “Book Bird,” a sculpture by celebrated Chicago artist Richard Hunt, which will reside in the Reading Garden of the Center’s Chicago Public Library branch.
Additionally, acclaimed artist and architect Maya Lin – renowned for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. – will design a sculptural water feature for the Center’s water terrace, dedicated to President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham.

Nearly all original artwork will be free to view by the public at the Obama Presidential Center when the campus opens in 2026.

About Lindsay Adams

Lindsay Adams (b. 1990, Washington, D.C.) is a writer and painter working across traditional mediums. Employing her educational foundation as a social scientist, with a background in foreign relations, sociology, and cultural anthropology, she systematically engages in her work with precise critical analysis and a perceptive understanding of the complex fabric of social dynamics. Lindsay received her B.A.s in both in International Studies: World Politics and Diplomacy and Spanish from The University of Richmond.

Embracing her intersectional identity, Lindsay’s work serves as a reflection of self, exploring personal and collective histories and the role imagination plays in mining the complexities and nuances of life. Her current body of work is a conceptual investigation of the balance between the known and the possible, examining themes of place, liberation, expanse, and freedom. Each intuitive mark invites a dialogue between reality and dreaming, as she mines through layers of gesture and color to build worlds. Adams alternates between abstract and representational forms, employing formal techniques that highlight the physicality of paint and the delicacy of gesture. In this way, she weaves multiple paintings within one, crafting a rich tapestry, informed by interconnected experiences that invite reflection on the boundlessness of dreaming. Adams’ work highlights her interest in constructing imagined ecologies, spaces in which rhythmic gestures and dynamic hues engage in a continuous dialogue.

Lindsay Adams is currently finalizing her MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago She has been the recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Award in 2024 and the New Artist Society Merit Award in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C., and is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Northwestern Law School.