A monumental new painting now hangs in the Obama Presidential Center, created by artist Mark Bradford over five grueling years to capture the city's most difficult truths alongside its hard-won strength.
The work, titled "City of the Big Shoulders," draws its name from Carl Sandburg's famous ode to Chicago and functions as something far heavier than decoration. Bradford embedded layers of meaning into the composition, mapping both the migration patterns that shaped the city and the structural racism that defined so much of that history.
The artist's labor-intensive process reflects the weight of what he set out to document. Five years of research, painting, and revision went into translating Chicago's contradictions onto canvas: a place built on industry and ambition that also excludes, exploits, and excludes again.
Bradford's approach moves beyond simple celebration. Rather than presenting Chicago as a triumphant narrative, the painting acknowledges the systems that constrained entire communities even as they contributed to the city's rise. This intellectual honesty gives the work its power and its place within a presidential center dedicated to examining America's ongoing challenges.
The piece sits as a permanent fixture in one of the nation's most high-profile cultural institutions, ensuring that visitors will encounter not just the aspirational story of Chicago, but the messy, painful machinery beneath it.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Bradford refused the easy version, and that refusal is exactly what makes this painting belong in that space."
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