The Obama Portraits Tour opens at MFAH, with 'already iconic' works of the former president and first lady

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The two paintings, by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald respectively, make up the exhibition...

Barack Obama’s gaze follows visitors as they cross Cullinan Hall inside the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. It’s easy to imagine his voice, warm and familiar, booming through the Caroline Weiss Law Building, inviting onlookers to come closer.

Anita Bateman, MFAH associate curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, compares the artists’ identity to a “leaked secret.” The portraits were first unveiled in 2018 and subsequently doubled the National Portrait Gallery’s attendance that year from 1.1 million to 2.1 million. Wiley and Sherald have since turned their focus to other parts of their practice, declining most interviews and appearances relating to the project.

Wiley expressed strong feelings about colorless backdrops, so Bateman opted for navy, inspired by Air Force One, mixed with sky blue. “It gives a presidential feeling,” she says of the shade. The artist portrays America’s inaugural Black president leaning slightly forward in a Federal Revival-style chair, in reference to the time period after the U.S. gained its independence; the detail symbolizes democracy. Barack Obama is notably shown sans neck-tie and with an dress shirt unbuttoned; his casual pose is similar to George Peter Alexander Healy’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln, Elaine de Kooning’s John F. Kennedy and Robert Anderson’s George W. Bush.

Tinterow says visitors turned up in grand millinery for “Picasso Black and White” the following year, too. “They asked if they could get in free since they wore their hats and I said, ‘Let them through,’” he recalls.

 

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