The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park is putting the finishing touches on a full-scale replica of the Obama-era Oval Office, complete with reproduction furniture, copied artwork, and a bowl of fake apples where real ones once sat. The project occupies the fourth floor of the center's museum tower, which has already drawn criticism for its visual severity and height.
Interior designer Michael S. Smith, who led the original 2010 Oval Office makeover for former President Obama, also led the design of the replica. Virtually everything from the original will be recreated: the furniture, books, carpet, and artwork, down to the smallest detail. More than 70 items will go on display.
The price tag for the overall Obama Presidential Center: $850 million.
According to the Chicago Sun Times, the replica includes a full-size reproduction of the Resolute Desk, the historic piece crafted from the oak timbers of the British ship HMS Resolute and gifted to the United States by Queen Victoria in 1880. The reproduction was made by a company in Indonesia. It even features a replica of the famous red call button, though the button will not function.
The original 23-by-30-foot Oval Office rug, which bore the presidential seal along with quotes from Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was reproduced at full size by its original maker in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reproductions of Edward Hopper paintings that once hung in the Oval Office will be displayed under an agreement with the Whitney Museum of American Art. Native American artists from Canada and Santa Fe, New Mexico, who created pottery for the original, were tapped again for the replica.
Since the replica has no outside windows, designers will use light boxes to mimic sunlight.
One signature touch from the original: a Shaker-style wooden bowl of apples that Smith placed on the Oval Office coffee table instead of flowers. Smith recalled the reasoning:
"Even though clearly he loves flowers, the idea of something more practical, something more American ... was so much more interesting and thoughtful for him."
The apples will return for the replica. They'll be plastic.
Those involved in the project made clear that this is not a passive museum exhibit. Obama himself played a direct role in shaping the replica, as he reportedly has with the entire campus. Museum director Louise Bernard described his involvement in unmistakably reverential terms:
"He is a reader, writer, thinker. He's a creative. He cares deeply about arts and culture. He's a film producer. He has an incredibly exacting eye."
Reader, writer, thinker, creative, film producer. That's quite a list for a man whose presidential legacy is supposed to speak for itself inside a museum. The quote reads less like a description and more like an awards ceremony introduction.
Valerie Jarrett offered her own assessment of the replica's fidelity, noting that Obama himself spotted one flaw:
"And he noted that it didn't have some of the water stains on it that the original program did. But, short of that, it is an absolute replica."
Smith donated his Oval Office redesign archives to the Obama Foundation, which provided the museum's exhibit designers with the information needed for an accurate reproduction. The White House Historical Association, founded in 1961 by then-first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and the White House Office of the Curator also contributed to the effort.
Smith framed the center's ambitions in expansive terms:
"This building is geared toward being an active part of the community and the international community. It's a living thing that's going to be about so much more than just the eight years."
That last line is worth sitting with. Presidential libraries exist precisely to document and preserve a president's time in office. The suggestion that this center will transcend those eight years is revealing. It is not merely a historical archive. It is, by design, a platform.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a presidential center featuring a replica Oval Office. Other presidential libraries do the same, and Smith acknowledged as much, calling the Oval Office recreation "always one of the most popular things." Visitors will be able to walk in, sit behind the reproduction Resolute Desk, and experience the room as it appeared during the Obama years. That has genuine educational and historical value.
But context matters. This is an $850 million complex on Chicago's South Side, a city plagued by fiscal distress and violent crime that accelerated during and after the Obama years. The center sits in Jackson Park, public land. The museum tower itself has already faced criticism for its imposing scale.
And the details of the replica tell a story of their own. A nonfunctional red button. Plastic apples standing in for real ones. Light boxes pretending to be windows. An Indonesian-made copy of a desk that Queen Victoria gave the United States nearly 150 years ago. Every element is a careful simulation, impressive in craft but hollow at the center.
Jarrett predicted visitors won't notice the difference:
"The art, the rug, the furniture, the apples, every last detail — I think people would have a hard time telling the difference."
Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's the problem. A replica so precise that no one can tell it from the real thing is a remarkable achievement in design. It is also, at $850 million, a remarkable monument to the belief that presentation is substance.
The apples look real. You just can't eat them.