More than nine years after leaving office, former President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday that tickets to his long-delayed presidential library, museum and community hub in Chicago are now available for purchase, with opening day set for June 19.
“Michelle and I can’t wait for you to visit the Obama Presidential Center!” Obama wrote on social media. “You’ll be able to check out the Museum along with public spaces like a new branch of the Chicago Public Library with a reading room, a two-acre playground, a fruit and vegetable garden, and more.”
Like everything else in U.S. politics, the Obama Center has already sparked controversy — much of it centered on its contemporary brutalist architecture and convoluted construction process.
In March, President Trump criticized his Democratic predecessor’s legacy project while revealing initial renderings of his own: a skyscraper hotel in Miami with a red, white and blue spire and large gold block letters spelling “TRUMP” across the front.
“I don’t believe in building libraries or museums … like the Barack Hussein Obama one in Chicago,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “[It’s] in not a good location and it’s a very unattractive building that’s seriously late and seriously over budget.”
But now that the Obama Center is finally set to open its doors, what can visitors actually expect? Here’s everything we know so far.
When does the Obama Presidential Center officially open?
The public can visit starting on Juneteenth, a federal holiday that falls on June 19, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States and carries special significance for America’s first Black president.
VIPs will arrive a day earlier for a dedication ceremony that promises “legendary performances by global icons and powerful remarks from today’s most prominent voices,” according to the Obama Foundation.
In March, Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett told MS NOW that former Republican President George W. Bush is invited to attend the ceremony — but Trump is not.
Why has it taken so long?
The Obama Center has been in the works since Obama was president. Its location and institutional partner — Chicago’s South Side (where the Obamas once lived) and the University of Chicago (where Obama once taught) — were chosen in 2015. Its architects, New York-based Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, were chosen in 2016. Its concept design was released in 2018. It was initially supposed to break ground that year and open in 2020 or 2021.
But because of the historic nature of the site — Chicago’s Jackson Park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition — the federal government took four years to review the plans. Some design changes were made to meet objections raised in the review; other agreements addressed local concerns about gentrification. Groundbreaking was ultimately delayed until August 2021.
The project’s initial cost estimate was about $500 million. Last September, a spokesperson for the Obama Foundation put the final figure at around $850 million.
In comparison, the George W. Bush Presidential Center near Dallas opened a little more than four years after Bush left office and cost $250 million (at the time). The William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Ark., opened less than four years after Clinton left office and cost $165 million (at the time).
What’s up with the design?
The architecture of the 180-foot Obama museum tower has been divisive, to say the least. Nicknamed the “Obamalisk,” it was designed by the husband-and-wife team of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who are also known for the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the Asia Society Hong Kong Center and the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Williams and Tsien are not radical architects, but the look of the Obama museum tower — a faceted, asymmetrical, largely windowless mass of granite and concrete jutting above Jackson Park like some alien monolith — is unlike any other presidential museum.
As a result, it has drawn comparisons to “trash cans, Jenga towers, the Death Star and litter boxes, along with prisons, the Eye of Sauron and Easter Island heads,” according to the New York Post.
Workers finish installing words from former President Barack Obama’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
(Chicago Tribune via Getty Images)
The Obama Presidential Center, as seen in January 2026.
(Chicago Tribune via Getty Images)
Obama himself was determined to push the envelope, urging his architects to channel Romanian modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi in order to create something that would “be seen as an art piece and not just as architecture,” Williams recently told the New Yorker. “He wanted us to do something that we had not done before, and that is hard. He didn’t let it rest.”
The result is “very much a product of his vision as well as ours,” Williams concluded.
How do I get tickets?
Tickets to the museum are $30 for adults and children 12 and over. They’re available at tickets.obama.org on a timed-entry basis from June 19 through Nov. 30. June is already sold out, but at the time this article was published, there were still a few slots left in July.
Access to the rest of the 19.3-acre Obama Center campus is free — no ticket required. Unless, that is, you want a 90-minute guided tour with “exclusive access and breathtaking views” in addition to museum admission. That will cost $75 for visitors 3 and older.
What’s to see?
The museum is the main attraction. It tells the story of Obama and first lady Michelle Obama across four themed floors:
Toward a More Perfect Union: A look back at the historic movements and personal moments that shaped Obama’s path to the White House.
Working for the Common Good: Recounting the achievements of the Obama administration across two presidential terms.
The People’s House: A peek inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., complete with a full-scale replica of Obama’s Oval Office and examples of “Mrs. Obama’s iconic fashion.”
We the People: A place to “examine the role we all play in building and maintaining a more perfect union,” including by designing “a customized digital button detailing your goals for creating positive change.”
Atop the museum building is the Sky Room, where visitors can gaze across Chicago through 5-foot-high concrete words etched onto its exterior — a passage from Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. — and enjoy commissioned art installations by Idris Khan, Jenny Holzer and Carrie Mae Weems, among others. The Sky Room can also be booked for weddings and “special events.”
Other attractions spread across the campus include an NBA regulation-size basketball court, a podcast recording studio, a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, a restaurant, a cafe, a gift shop, an auditorium, multiple classrooms and various parklike outdoor spaces — including a playground, a fruit and vegetable garden, a plaza, a “great lawn” and a water terrace named in honor of Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham.
“It’s a fountain that’s designed where kids can run in and out of the fountain, and play in it and splash in it,” Obama told NBC. “Maybe 20 years from now where people won’t know, and I can kind of sneak over there and just sit there and watch some kids running through some water on a nice summer day. I know that would make her happy.”
What if I want to shop for merch before I visit?
You’re in luck. The center’s web store is very much live — complete with $20 “Empathy” trinket dishes, $30 museum tower clay lapel pins, $45 Bo plush stuffies and $95 Michelle pearl earrings.
