The official portraits of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are headed on a five-city tour beginning this month.
Kicking off their run on June 18th, The Art Institute in Chicago will first showcase the portraits painted by famed artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. The tour’s first stop is especially special, as it is where the Obama’s had their first date.
“It was particularly exciting that Chicago was chosen to be the very first stop, and it’s something that we really want to honor because the Obamas and Chicago are inextricably linked,” Art Institute Director of Interpretation Emily Fry explained to PEOPLE. Fry called the portrait’s placement in Chicago a “homecoming.”
The tour is the first time that the Obama’s portraits are leaving Washington, D.C. It is also the first time that both images will be displayed in the same exhibit together. They were initially located in different sections of the National Portrait Gallery.
The paintings will remain in Chicago between June 18th and August 15th. They will then move on to the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Atlanta’s High Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. The tour is expected to conclude by May 2022.
National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Saje calls the tour an “opportunity for audiences in different parts of the country to witness how portraiture can engage people in the beauty of dialogue and shared experience.”
