Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years

Installation view of Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years," July 10 - October 11, 2026, Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts. Artworks (left to right): Diamond Stingily, Entryways (2016); Kevin Beasley, Untitled (Antique) (2016); Glenn Ligon, Excerpt (2009); and Martine Syms, Notes on Gesture (2015). Image courtesy of Logan Center Exhibitions. Photograph by Travis Roozée

By ESME GRAHAM, July 29 2026

Walking over to the Logan Center for the Arts on the University of Chicago campus, the newly-opened Barack Obama Presidential Center is within view, emerging from the treetops. While the art displayed in the Obama Center is largely recent commissions made specifically for the space, this exhibition, Longer Than the Sky, curated by University of Chicago doctoral candidate Jenny Harris, consists predominantly of art created during the eight years of the Obama administration. Now nearly twenty years since the 2008 election, the exhibition attempts to identify the concerns and aesthetics that were contemporary to the time period. Instead of seeking to capture a national feeling, this exhibition is grounded in historical events. While Obama himself is directly referenced in several of the artworks, the exhibition aims to examine how artists investigated a larger set of domestic issues. Through this impressive roster of exceptional works by leading contemporary artists, what emerges, through Harris’ shaping, is a frank examination of the concerns of a moment in American life. 

Installation view of Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years," July 10 - October 11, 2026, Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts. Image courtesy of Logan Center Exhibitions. Photograph by Travis Roozée 

The exhibition is divided into five distinct sections—each titled for an included artwork—which guide the viewer through the space. However, even from outside the glass door of the gallery, the viewer is confronted with a hazy or uncanny face paired with their own reflection. This reflection is from a warped and oddly shaped mirror, in front of which is placed a mannequin head. This installation, by Pope.L, is titled Head of State A (2017-18) and upon closer inspection the referenced “head” is adorned with “dissected images of former U.S. President Barack Obama,” according to the exhibition’s checklist. Pasted along the contours of the three-dimensional head, the face takes on a blurry quality, like a remembered version of the former president. Pope.L is an apt artist to introduce the exhibition: his work functions best when it is allowed to be opaque. The gallery guide writes, “[his] work destabilizes the desire for stable understandings of identity and cultural icons.” Indeed, this work deconstructs what seems to be evident about the position of important political figures. What remains is up to the viewer in the mirror. 

Installation view of Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years," July 10 - October 11, 2026, Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts. Image courtesy of Logan Center Exhibitions. Photograph by Travis Roozée 

Each section examines different concerns that drove American life at the time. The themes range from violence to the continued rise of neoliberalism to the 2008 financial crisis to more local concerns plaguing Chicago’s South Side. The first section, titled Lateral Shift (named for a fantastic included work by Jack Whitten), examines the inauguration as a means of introducing the Obama era. It includes, for example, Untitled #1, a photograph by Catherine Opie, which has a kind of meta-framing. A bundled-up crowd of people watch as a screen projects a live feed of Barack and Michelle Obama waving on the day of the 2009 inauguration, the Capitol building far in the distance. The viewer, like the photographed audience, watches this historical scene unfold from afar, also mediated through a camera. 

Rachel Harrison, Untitled, 2011. Colored pencil on paper, 19 x 24 in. Private Collection. Courtesy the artist, Greene Naftali, New York, and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

While works by Pope.L, Opie, Whitten, and Josh Kline reference or depict Obama directly, other works address more systemic American concerns. The section titled Entryways, for example, examines the pervasiveness of violence in American culture and life. Particularly striking among these is Rachel Harrison’s Untitled, a 2011 drawing of the late singer Amy Winehouse. The piece was displayed at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center for the Arts in 2015, where, according to the gallery guide, “the work was shot by a former security officer who vandalized the gallery with spray paint, a revolver, and a semi-automatic handgun before taking his own life.” Indeed, there is a bullet hole almost perfectly centered in the composition, the punctured glass fracturing out toward the pencil drawings of the pop icon. Harrison ultimately decided to keep the bullet hole as a sort of monument to the gun violence of which it was collateral damage. Pervasive before and after the Obama administration, this particular instance of violence is isolated by Harrison’s drawing, while acknowledging that it certainly will not be the last. 

Installation view of Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years," July 10 - October 11, 2026, Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts. Image courtesy of Logan Center Exhibitions. Artworks (left to right): Amanda Williams, Color(ed) Theory: Ultrasheen (2014-16); Jenny Holzer, Blue Benghazi (2018); and Allan Sekula, Factory Occupation. Chicago, December 2008 (2008). Photograph by Travis Roozée  

The exhibition also examines the South Side of Chicago, where the exhibition—and the Obama Center—are located. Included are two of Amanda Williams’ Color(ed) Theory photographs, in which she painted condemned houses from Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood in vibrant monochrome and then photographed them. Williams drew inspiration for the colors from products that were predominantly marketed to Black consumers. This photographic series, which was captured from 2014-2016, grounds the viewer in a more local series of ongoing concerns about poverty, underdevelopment, and gentrification.

Jack Whitten, Bar Code, # II Lateral Shift, 2008. Acrylic collage on canvas, 36 1/4 x 80 1/4 inches. Courtesy the Jack Whitten Estate. © 2026 Jack Whitten Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Jeff McLane

Harris is aware that history and culture are not driven by a single individual, or even a single administration. What emerges in Longer Than the Sky is a snapshot of a moment of American life illustrated by leading contemporary artists. Indeed, in addition to Pope.L, Whitten, Opie, and Williams there are works by Jenny Holzer, Louise Lawler, Ralph Lemon, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Adrian Piper, and Hito Steyerl, among others. All of these artists cohere because of, not despite, their interest in a range of concerns that defined a now-bygone era of American life.

Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years

Curated by Jenny Harris

Logan Center for the Arts

July 10 - October 11 2026