| As far as films about aliens go, Arrival (2016) was refreshing. A linguist and a physicist get called out to the middle of Montana to communicate with aliens that seek to give humans a unique ability to see into the future. It’s a story about cooperation and giving something up before expecting anything in return. Even the spaceship - a sleek, grey mass delicately floating above the fields - looks more like a gua sha than anything else. There’s no crashing through buildings and no beams of blue light. |
| Ten years after the release, the United States is getting another grey monolith but instead of Montana, it’s landed on the south side of Chicago. The Barack Obama Presidential Center is a hulking, 70m-tall monument along the shores of Lake Michigan. The severity of its scale is hard to understate. The centre stands alone in Jackson Park and resembles a meteor that has just made impact and vapourised the buildings around it. Its isolation amidst the flatness of the park, the lake and low-lying neighbourhoods is stark. The inside is markedly alien free and houses floors of memorabilia and exhibitions dedicated to Obama’s time in office. It is the latest in a long line of uniquely American passion projects: Presidential Libraries. |
Something to remember me by
| Presidential Centres and Libraries are a uniquely American phenomenon. The Presidential Library System is a network of fifteen libraries/Presidential Centres which act as archives and hold documents, videos, photographs and other memorabilia to be made publicly available from a President’s time in office. They are built almost entirely through private funds and donations raised by a President’s supporters. |
| Every President since Herbert Hoover (1929–33) has built one. Presidential libraries are billed as a way to give back to local communities and preserve a president’s legacy. They are one last (eternal) hurrah for an outgoing President as they try to mould their legacy on their own terms. While many in the past have been modest civic buildings, they are gradually turning into flashy megaprojects, at times with gilded statues and fighter planes. Presidential Centres come with the usual disclaimers which impress that they are actually community buildings that will revitalise the local neighbourhood but always gloss over the quiet part: they immortalise a person who was always meant to be temporary. They are temples to ego clad in the promise of public good and the United States does not need any more. |
| The occupancy of the Oval Office is, by design, transient. The cycle of elections and campaigns all point to the belief that the Presidency itself is meant to be the permanent fixture, not the President. Libraries and centres conflate this distinction and become monuments to a single person. |
Not all Presidents are made equal
| Along the banks of the Nervión in northern Spain lies a contorted, silver giant. When it first appeared, it was unlike anything the world had seen before and it single-handedly changed the trajectory of a neighbourhood. Since 1997, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has been used as a case study for ‘The Bilbao Effect’, a phenomenon where a single unique piece of architecture revitalises parts of a city. The Guggenheim Bilbao attracted tourists and generated hundreds of millions of euros for the local economy and quickly became a poster child for high-impact architecture. The wider impact of a one-off building by a major architect is often one of the main drivers of attracting funding for Presidential Centres, but this ignores some key differences between the centres and everyday museums. |
| It should come as no surprise that the popularity or cultural impact of a President directly affects the popularity of their library. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum have boasted the highest visitor numbers over the last five years, at times crossing 200,000. It would not be surprising if Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s Presidential Centres can command similar numbers but the reality is that this does not translate across Presidents. The William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum barely crossed 60,000 visitors in 2024 and the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum has only crossed 90,000 visitors once in the last five years. In comparison, The National Museum of American History attracts well over two million visitors a year. There are more unchangeable factors at play. In the increasingly partisan world that we are moving toward, what is the broader appeal of a museum to one person of one party? In cases where Presidents have decided to build their centres in cities that are of historic significance to them, is the pre-defined typology of a Presidential Centre necessarily the most effective way to bring about economic regeneration? |
How to shape the past
| Presidential Centres tap into the bigger question of legacy. By becoming the go-to location to learn about a single President, they also hold a monopoly in shaping their perception. Upon opening, Bill Clinton’s Presidential Centre was criticised for scant detail about his affair with Monica Lewinsky and use of presidential pardons. The nature of Presidential Centres is at odds with the need to provide unbiased historical accounts. A far stronger use case is to revitalise communities and if leaving a lasting impact is the end goal, there may be a better way to achieve that. In 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers rated the quality of America’s infrastructure at a ‘Grade C’. It improved on the grading given in 2021 but projects such as schools and roads were ranked at a D+. As awkward as America’s next parent-teacher meeting may be, the quality of its basic public facilities is in dire need of improvement. That’s where the fundraising for Presidential Centres comes in. Instead of channeling the hundreds of millions of dollars into one building, the money raised could be used to create a ‘Legacy Fund’. The largest chunk of this fund could target one specific infrastructure need at the site or state where a Presidential Centre would have originally been built. This could be fixing potholes or subsidising the cleaning of a local metro. The aim is to create a series of repetitive, small scale interventions. Low cost, high impact interventions can be much more cost effective without having to navigate the full legislative mazes that would come with complete infrastructure overhaul. Instead of promising to create whole new parks, the fund could be used to ensure existing parks have sufficient nighttime lighting so that residents feel safe crossing them at night. Undoubtedly, telling a donor that their money will buy lightbulbs will be a much harder sell than the promise of having their name carved into the granite of a million dollar lobby, but the pitch is a long term strategy. It would deliver on making American towns and cities more usable on a wider scale as opposed to concentrating change into one single building. Then follows the question of culture and memorabilia. Presidential Centres host cultural events, exhibitions and shows for the local community. They showcase objects from a President’s life and time in office as a form of behind-the-scenes nostalgia for visitors - the Barack Obama Presidential Center has a commemorative cereal box on display. While every President is bound to accumulate a wealth of items, there is no good reason for all of them to be perpetually displayed in one place. Instead of concentrating all memorabilia in one building, the Legacy Fund could be used to create a series of touring exhibitions around the country. Working in conjunction with existing galleries, places of worship and other public spaces, the fund could make a Presidency accessible across all states. Exhibitions could be curated by a President’s Foundation to highlight chosen causes and artists local to the venue. The overall message is that upon leaving office, the President takes on a role much more akin to an everyday civilian as opposed to a mythological figure. The Legacy Fund would retain the ideas and values of a presidency long into the future but in a deliberately impactful yet temporary manner. The core value at the heart of American democracy is freedom. With the freedom to determine one’s fate comes the temporary nature of elected office. The occupancy of the Oval Office is, by design, transient. The cycle of elections and campaigns all point to the belief that the Presidency itself is meant to be the permanent fixture, not the President. Libraries and centres conflate this distinction and become monuments to a single person. Everything about the Presidency is already inflated compared to other countries. The plane is bigger. The motorcade is bigger and, in a few months, the ballroom might also be bigger. The influence of American power is more outsized than what any other institution can project and it just doesn’t need any more veneration, let alone toward one person who held it for one moment in time. As Barack Obama’s centre finishes and as Donald Trump’s vision for a Florida skyscraper is published, it is clear that the allure of memorialising yourself may always be too great to resist. The American Presidency should be catalogued extensively and made accessible to the wider public, just not through shrines. A centre that is built and funded by one person’s donors is inadvertently going to be a politicised building and unlikely to have an impartial or critical view on a Presidency. While legacy-making can rarely be truly impartial, there are ways in which the current system could be changed that put change first. The impact of life after office needs more effort from the ground up, not spaceships landing from the sky. |