Obama Presidential Center opens in Chicago with star-studded ceremony
by Lisa Hornung · UPIJune 18 (UPI) -- The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago opened on Thursday with a long list of celebrities performing, speaking and in attendance to mark the 19-acre space's grand opening.
The center's grand opening ceremony included speeches from former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, as well as musical performances from The Roots, Eddie Vedder and Stevie Wonder, among others.
Every living president and first lady, with the exception of current President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump, were in attendance and seated onstage with the Obamas and their daughters.
The invitation-only ceremony was live-streamed on the Obama Foundation website and its social media pages, and tickets for a watch party about one mile away at Midway Plaisance Park were sold out before the event began.
The grand opening center, located on the south side of Chicago, has been more than a decade in the making and cost about $850 million to build, including the unique building at its center that houses a museum on the Obama's lives.
Starting Friday, the center will be open to the public and is expected to see up to 1 million visitors per year.
"Y'all, hope is all we've got," Michelle Obama said during her speech, calling back to the one of the central themes of her husband's campaigns for president and his eight years as president.
"The Obama Presidential Center was created as a beacon of hope," she said. "A monument to our unshakable values. The ones my husband has exemplified his entire life: Equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness."
"Especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband," Obama said, adding that "yes, we're all tested in one way or another. And there are plenty of times we all fall short. But deep down in our hearts and souls we all know right from wrong."
The three-hour ceremony's full musical performance line-up -- in addition to speeches from the Obamas, a prayer to start the ceremony and various introductions -- featured Bruce Springsteen, Christina Aguilera, John Legend, Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson, Marc Anthony, The Roots, Common, Eddie Vedder, Bono and The Edge, Tems, and Marsai Martin.
President Obama's speech touched on themes he has frequently included in addresses throughout his political career, from the moral arc of the universe to the importance of community building and insisting on honesty and decency from the United States' elected officials.
"I am not immune to anger or doubt," Obama said.
"But I do know this, when we stop lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters," Obama said, "we open the door to the most ruthless or the most careless, or the most fearful among us who see some groups as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place."
"I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end," he said.
In their speeches, both Obamas also noted that while there is a museum in the center's distinct central building, it is overall designed to be a place where people spend time doing more than examining artifacts.
And although the center has some artifacts from during Obama's eight years as president, his presidential documents are stored in the mostly digital Barack Obama Presidential Library run by the National Archives.
"I would urge you to skip the clips of my speeches -- you have heard them all before," and instead suggested that museum visitors with limited time to spend there focus on exhibits about people who worked in and with his administration on things they did, and did not, accomplish.
In addition to the museum, the campus has a branch of the Chicago Public Library, an NBA regulation-size basketball court and a Women's Garden dedicated to women leaders in Chicago.
It also features an auditorium, a media suite that visitors can use, a Wetland Walk, a fruit and vegetable garden, and a playground.
Tickets for the museum during the grand opening weekend, which runs from Friday through Sunday, are sold out -- and are sold out through October -- but the entire center has planned free, "open house-style" events across the campus for each of the three days.
Obama Presidential Center previewed in Chicago
Statues of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama are on display during a media preview event at the Obama Presidential Center and Museum in Chicago on June 3, 2026. Photo by Tannen Maury/UPI | License Photo