The Barack Obama Presidential Center, with possibly the ugliest building ever conceived, opens today. Three other living former Presidents will attend and there will be entertainments by living cadavers such as Bruce Springstein and U2’s Bono. The assembled crowd may get a collective thrill up their legs.

The festivities were scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. Chicago time. Presidents Biden, Bush and Clinton were all invited to attend the opening of The Barack Obama Presidential Center. The same invitation was not extended to Donald Trump because he compared the main building to a “trash heap” although Trump is invited to tour the grounds at his leisure.

A garbage can appearing facility is extremely appropriate for a garbage-laden presidency. pic.twitter.com/t74eZWoifJ

— Greg’s iPinions (@Gregs_iPinions) June 18, 2026

The New York Times had this write up this morning:

For Chicagoans, the opening of the $850 million, 19-acre museum campus has been a long time coming: It was two mayors ago, in 2015, when President Obama announced that the museum would be built in his adopted hometown of Chicago. Since then, the museum and everything that has come with it — a playground, a public library, a sledding hill — has slowly come together in Jackson Park, near the University of Chicago campus.

The museum is not just a reminder of Mr. Obama’s presidency, said Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff in Mr. Obama’s White House who was also mayor of Chicago in 2015 and helped with what he called the “hustle, calculation, maneuvering and jostling” to bring the museum to the city.

“For the city as a whole, it’s a billion-dollar infusion of an investment that pays dividends way beyond the billion dollars, specifically on the South Side,” Mr. Emanuel said. “This is generational.”

The Obama Foundation, which has paid for the new center with private donations, said that 250 people would work at the museum, and one million people were expected to visit the campus each year. Tickets are $30 for adults, and $26 for Illinois residents.

On the eve of the opening, as Chicago was drenched by a heavy summer rain, workers scurried outside the center in Jackson Park, putting finishing touches on preparations, as streets nearby were blocked off in anticipation of the crush of visitors on Thursday. On the grassy expanse of the Midway Plaisance nearby, a giant screen was erected to broadcast the ceremony to Chicagoans who wished to gather and watch from the lawn.

When I tuned into the opening, less than 2500 people were watching on X, less than 25,000 were watching on YouTube. I thought there would be more desirous of feeling that leg thrill once again.

I watched Michelle Obama speak. Her remarks were trite and Hillary Clinton was nodding so aggressively that I thought Hillary’s head was going to take flight. Bono, accompanied by The Edge, sang a love song to Michelle. The song mainly consisted of repeating “Michelle, my belle.” over and over. Does Paul McCartney get residuals for that?

I watched more than I should have. I saw Mark Anthony sing (yikes) “aye, mi gente” with Kamala Harris and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker in the crowd. I noticed how bad the sound system was and now we know why Trump is always kvetching about sound systems.

Enough about the county fair of talent that I saw in Chicago at the Barack Obama Presidential Center. Let’s talk about the heinous Soviet designed architecture of the building. From unHerd:

The early reviews of the Barack Obama Presidential Center are in, and they’re deservedly brutal. The ex-president’s monument, opening on Chicago’s Southside this Juneteenth, has been compared to the Death Star, a Klingon prison, a self-cleaning cat litter box, or, as implied by President Trump in a Truth Social post, a giant garbage can.

Yet, what it resembles most, I’d argue, is a mausoleum, the Obamausoleum, if you will. The tower is clad in New Hampshire granite, rises in a faceted, asymmetrical mass with almost no windows, and looms over a grassy public park. It even has words carved near the top, giving the whole thing the unmistakable air of the world’s largest headstone. But what it marks — unintentionally — is the final resting place of Obamaism: a politics after politics, a monument to the fantasy that if enough institutions speak pleasant bromides in a reassuring voice, if politicians act like noble characters from The West Wing, some ineffable thing called “the arc of the moral universe” will bend and everyone wins. Who needs culture war when you can have culture peace?

Let’s be honest. It’s flat ugly. If you read Douglas Adams’ A Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, you get the reference. The reference to the Vogon Constructor Fleet, which also reminds me of Obama himself:

The Vogon Constructor Fleet consists of large, yellow, slab-like spaceships designed to demolish planets for bureaucratic purposes, such as clearing the way for intergalactic highways. The fleet is famously responsible for the destruction of Earth and later attempted to destroy the planet Nano. The ships are described as hanging in the air “the way that bricks don’t,” emphasizing their massive, awkward, and humorously improbable presence.

I knew I heard him say this. But then, everything Obama says is a golden truth:

"Hard things are hard." – @BarackObama #MyForeverPresident

— Al 🐝 (@ProperBailey) June 18, 2026

The ugly building fits him. Perfectly.

Featured Image: TorsoDog/Wikimedia Commons.org/cropped/ Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.