PoMoBama
Thanks to BNN and the great community of commenters there, I was led to this set of images from the Obama family’s visit to the Pompidou Museum in Paris. Shaw’s playful post title, The Artful President, certainly leaves plenty of room for interpretation. I’ve filed these images to come back to later when I explore the Obama candidacy’s engagement with the art world. The culture signals emanating from the Obama White House are undeniably postmodern, cosmopolitan and even transnational. I had originally assumed that the intense advocacy of his candidacy from the art world developed as an independent phenomenon. But perhaps Team Obama was actively cultivating that energy earlier than what I had figured?
Related, and equally interesting to my research was this piece byAmy Chozick and Kelly Crow for the WSJ, “Changing the Art on the White House Walls.”
Here, the diverse representation by African-American, Asian, Hispanic and female artists during the campaign is being brought into the White House.
(image: Pete Souza/White House. Paris. June 6, 2006. WH Flickr stream)