Two questions no one’s asking on the Obama Library

Two questions no one’s asking on the Obama Library May 4, 2015

1.  What’s the cost?

2.  What’s the content?

The background:

The Tribune is now reporting that the library coming to Chicago is now a done deal; the only unanswered question is which major city park will have its acreage sliced off to become museum grounds, parking, the First Lady’s Garden, and the like.

With respect to question 1, it is already apparent that, despite claims that the library will be built with private funds, there will be costs a-plenty for the city, region, and state.  The land is already being given to the Foundation free of charge.  And the Trib reports,

In order to strengthen the U. of C.’s bid, Emanuel has promised to work with the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra to improve transportation in the area. The mayor also has committed to providing new streetscapes and landscapes in and around the library as well as the surrounding neighborhood.

Museum boosters imagine all manner of economic development coming from the museum:

In the coming months, the foundation will enter into a formal partnership with the city to revitalize South Side communities around the library. Together, they will be charged with creating an economic environment that will attract supplemental businesses such as restaurants and hotels and provide road and transportation enhancement in neighborhoods that have long been neglected.

The University of Chicago, which will host the library, has boasted that the development would be a $600 million* economic catalyst that will revitalize neighborhoods, create commercial corridors and generate nearly 2,000 jobs.

(*Incidentally, $600 million?  From memory, if that’s referring purely to Library fundraising, that figure include the endowment that every library is expected to have, as well as the construction costs themselves.)

Folks, the South Side is already host to the Museum of Science and Industry.  We had a museum membership some years ago there (haven’t renewed it in a while as it got much more expensive, and covers much less without a further upgrade), and our usual practice was to come in the morning, eat lunch at the food court, and leave at closing time, hopping right back onto the highway.

It’s preposterous to imagine that a presidential museum will work wonders.  This is not the sort of museum that attracts tourists from out-of-town — at best, the usual tourists might add a day to their visit.  Hence, my suspicion about costs:  the only way these claims are anything other than pure fantasy is if there’s a presumption that the government, at all levels, is going to use the occasion of the library’s construction for some accompanying big-money construction projects.

Hence, my question:  what’s the pricetag? Given the fiscal condition of Chicago, and of Illinois, the people of the city, the region*, and the state deserve to know what the bill is going to be before Emmanuel and Rauner sign on the dotted line, start issuing bonds, and otherwise sink us further into debt.  (*If Metra’s expected to kick in cash for mass transit, that’ll impact our train fares directly, as this is regionally-funded.)

And question 2:  the content.

I wrote about this back in January:  presidential libraries, to the extent that they become expensive shrines to the individual and his family, quickly become white elephants, second-rate tourist destinations for rainy days, unless you can snag something pretty impressive, such as the Reagan Library’s Air Force One.  With Obama, in particular, given that he just didn’t have much of a story to tell prior to his rapid political rise, it’s very hard to envision anything other than this.  How do you craft a museum out of first dates and community organizing, speechmaking and Obamacare, the White House Garden and Let’s Move?  This is all pretty small stuff, and it would surely be an embarrassment to try to claim there’s anything larger than life about it.  If, on the other hand, you try to turn Obama’s story into a story of African-American history as the culmination of the civil rights movement, you compete with the DuSable Museum, hardly an improvement.  At best, there’s a way to center the story around civic engagement, but that’s too abstract to achieve in a museum format — if all you’ve got is pictures* and text, videos and interactive computer screens, you might as well put this all on a website and call it a day.  (*OK, fine, art museums are all about pictures, but not just 100-odd photos of the Obama family.)

The more this is a monument to Obama and his family, the less it deserves pride of place in Chicago.  Everyone is asking about the proposed George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art:  what will it contain, really?  Will it still be a draw, or a white elephant, after Star Wars fades into a distant memory?  And the power brokers feel perfectly entitled to ask these questions as a part of the decision around whether Lucas will be allowed to build at his chosen location.  No one is asking these questions of the Obama library — and the people of the city and state, being asked to spend big chunks of money, indirectly if not directly, deserve answers.


Browse Our Archives