Even after all these years, she admitted, Michelle Obama still feels a bit odd and awkward inside the White House. “Growing up on Euclid Avenue [on Chicago’s south side],” the former first lady reflected, “I never could have imagined that any of this would be part of my story.”
Yet from Wednesday her face will adorn the walls of America’s most famous address for as long as it still stands and presidents still call it home. In their first visit as a couple to the White House since leaving office in 2017, she and ex-president Barack Obama unveiled their official portraits at a ceremony in the East Room.
Whereas Oliver Cromwell wanted to be painted warts and all, Barack Obama admitted that he sought some enhancements from artist Robert McCurdy – but in vain. “You’ll note that he refused to hide any of my grey hairs,” he said. “Refused my request to make my ears smaller. He also talked me out of wearing a tan suit.”
As a result McCurdy – whose past subjects have included Nelson Mandela, Jeff Bezos, Toni Morrison, Muhammad Ali and Neil Armstrong – depicted the former president standing expressionless in black suit against a white background, as different as it gets from Kehinde Wiley’s version for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery of Obama floating in vegetation and flowers.
Meanwhile Sharon Sprung painted Michelle Obama seated on a sofa in the White House’s Red Room wearing a formal light blue dress. Her husband thanked the artist “for capturing everything I love about Michelle: her grace, her intelligence and the fact that she’s fine.”
At this Michelle looked half-gratified, half-embarrassed as the audience, crammed with nostalgic Obama alumni and Joe Biden officials, laughed and whooped.
The unveiling revived a bipartisan tradition last held a decade ago but this being the Obamas, no portrait is a mere punchline nor just a cold and lonely, lovely work of art. It is also a metaphor for America and who tells its story. To hear them give remarks after Biden was a reminder that while the current president speaks in prose, the Obamas speak in poetry.
As first lady for eight years, Michelle once memorably observed that she woke up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. On Wednesday she became the first African American woman enshrined for posterity in a first lady portrait. She acknowledged that she has never felt comfortable in the role of political symbol – but understands its importance to future generations.
“For me, this day is not just about what has happened,” she said, wearing braids, a painting of founding father and slave owner George Washington above her left shoulder. “It’s also about what could happen because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”
Someone in the audience shouted: “We love you, Michelle!” There was a spontaneous burst of applause. Barack, standing to her right, appeared suddenly moved.
Watched by her mother, Marian Robinson, in the front row, Michelle described the portraits of “a biracial kid with an unusual name” and “the daughter of a water pump operator and a stay-at-home mom” as a demonstration that people do not have to make a lot of money or come from a certain group or class or faith to fit in.
“Because, as Barack said, if the two of us can end up on the walls of the most famous address in the world, then, again, it is so important for every young kid who is doubting themselves to believe that they can too. That is what this country is about.”
Indeed, Michelle insisted in a voice quivering with an emotion, the day was not about her or her husband, nor even the portraits. “It’s about telling that fuller story, a story that includes every single American in every single corner of the country so that our kids and grandkids can see something more for themselves.
“And as much as some folks might want us to believe that that story has lost some of its shine, that division and discrimination and everything else might have dimmed its light, I still know, deep in my heart, that what we share as my husband continues to say is so much bigger than what we don’t.
She added: “Our democracy is so much stronger than our differences, and this little girl from the south side is blessed beyond measure to have felt the truth of that fuller story throughout her entire life – never more so than today.”
Such grace notes seemed to be vivid proof that Michelle Obama remains the anti-Donald Trump, the living antithesis of his dark nativist vision and administration run by privileged white males. They were an open invitation for dreamers of “Michelle for president”, though she has always been adamant it won’t happen. And they made the case that these two beautiful, fragile paintings will prove more valuable than anything by Rembrandt or Van Gogh.
