Kate Wagner on architecture and public memory.
The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Illinois, on July 29, 2026.(Marcin Golba / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
My Nation colleague Kate Wagner has written a brilliant critical essay on the Obama Center, which just opened in Chicago. I talk to her about how the history of presidential libraries, a now anachronistic form as well as the controversies surrounding the Obama Center’s displacement of public space and the dissatisfying way it memorializes the Obama presidency.
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My Nation colleague Kate Wagner has written a brilliant critical essay on the Obama Center, which just opened in Chicago. I talk to her about how the history of presidential libraries, a now-anachronistic form, as well as the controversies surrounding the Obama Center’s displacement of public space and the dissatisfying way it memorializes the Obama presidency.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
My Nation colleague Kate Wagner has written a brilliant critical essay on the Obama Center, which just opened in Chicago. I talk to her about how the history of presidential libraries, a now anachronistic form as well as the controversies surrounding the Obama Center’s displacement of public space and the dissatisfying way it memorializes the Obama presidency.
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands
Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.