A big week lies ahead for the city of Chicago as the Obama Presidential Center will be formally dedicated on Thursday, June 18.
The center, which includes a museum, library and community facilities, will open to the public the next day — Friday, Juneteenth. The center is in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, where Barack Obama found his calling, met his wife, and started a family.
HPR had the opportunity to attend an exclusive media preview of the museum earlier in June.
Before Chicago, Hawaiʻi was Obama’s home. To learn more about the former president’s connection to Hawaiʻi and to hear how the story would be told through the center, HPR spoke with Valerie Jarrett, CEO of the Obama Foundation and former senior advisor under the Obama administration.
“If somebody from Hawaiʻi comes to visit, and they see, you know, this photo of him out on the beach, or, you know, in the waves, and they’ll go, ‘oh, that could have been me, that could easily have been me,’” Jarrett told HPR.
“And that's why this is not simply a time capsule for the past, but really an incubator for future leaders.”
For Jarrett, Obama’s connection to Hawaiʻi is something that can be felt as easily as it can be seen.
“I think Hawaiʻi is always next to his heart, and it is where he came of age, and it shaped him profoundly. I think coming from a mixed race parents and his mom, who traveled with him all over the world, influenced him to be a citizen of the world with deep roots in Hawaiʻi, and I think that that will always be there,” she said.
“You can't take the Hawaiʻi out of Barack Obama.”
After spending the last decade working on the center and now with less than a week until its unveiling, Jarrett said the $850 million investment in the neighborhood is long overdue.
“The permanent jobs that we're creating here, the spotlight that we're putting on a part of the city that has not enjoyed investment historically,” she said.
“I grew up here, and so, in a sense, we're revealing what those of us who are from Chicago have always known, which is this is a really special community.”
Stay tuned to Hawaiʻi Public Radio for more coverage of the Obama Presidential Center in the days leading to its opening.
This story aired on The Conversation on June 15, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
