Springsteen, Stevie Wonder Headline Obama Center's Opening

The Obama Presidential Center will open with a concert built like a victory lap for a certain idea of American culture. Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, U2’s Bono and the Edge, and a long roster of stars will headline the centre’s grand opening in Chicago on Thursday.

The ceremony, on June 18 in the city’s Jackson Park, precedes the centre’s public opening on June 19, Juneteenth, a date chosen with obvious intent. Alongside the headliners the lineup runs deep: The Roots, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, Christina Aguilera, Common, Eddie Vedder, Marc Anthony and Tems are all set to perform, with actress Marsai Martin hosting.

The centre itself has been a long time coming, a museum, library and public campus on Chicago’s South Side that broke ground years ago amid debate over its cost, its design and its effect on the surrounding neighbourhood. The opening lineup is a statement of cultural alignment as much as a celebration: Springsteen and Vedder for heartland rock, Wonder and Legend and The Roots for the Black musical traditions the Obamas have long championed, all of it staged on Juneteenth.

The grand-opening ceremony is invitation only, but the Obama Foundation will livestream it globally at 11 a.m. Central, and is hosting a free public watch party on the nearby Midway Plaisance from 9 a.m. The centre opens to the public the next day.

The campus, designed by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, centres on a tall museum tower in Jackson Park and has cost well over half a billion dollars, funded privately. Its construction stretched across years of lawsuits and local debate over gentrification and the use of public parkland, making Thursday’s celebration the end of one long argument and, residents hope, the start of a more tangible payoff for the surrounding South Side.

For the Obamas, the opening is the physical anchoring of a post-presidency that has leaned into culture, storytelling and a particular brand of optimism, and the guest list reads like a curation of that sensibility. Whether the centre becomes the civic engine its backers promise or simply a handsome monument, Thursday night is the part everyone agrees on: a party, on the South Side, with one of the deepest bills in recent memory.