06/19/2026
Biden, Obama, Bush, and Clinton posed together in Chicago's Jackson Park ahead of the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center. The pool photo, shot by AP's Pablo Martinez Monsivais, also caught the four first ladies alongside them: Jill, Michelle, Laura, and Hillary.
There's no known prior photo of these exact four posed together. The closest precedent was April 25, 2013, at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, but that frame had Obama, Clinton, and W. Bush together with George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter. Biden wasn't in it.
Backstage produced the moment that's already going viral: George W. Bush slipped Michelle Obama a tin of Altoids, a callback to the cough drop he passed her at John McCain's 2018 funeral. Obama and Clinton were laughing as it happened. Before the public ceremony, the Obamas personally walked the Bidens, Bushes, and Clintons through the museum, including the replica Oval Office and East Room miniatures. An Obama spokesperson described the gathering as warm and gracious, with the group catching up on family.
The center sits on a roughly 19-acre campus on Chicago's South Side, near where the Obamas lived before the White House. It's not a traditional federally run presidential library. It's a privately funded Obama Foundation project that includes a museum, a Chicago Public Library branch, gardens, a playground, athletic facilities, and a basketball court. Final cost came in around $850 million, making it the most expensive presidential center to date. It opens to the public tomorrow, June 19, with tickets already sold out through October and over 1 million annual visitors expected.
The tower itself was designed to look like four hands coming together, a visual echo of what happened on stage. Speeches came from Barack and Michelle Obama. The performer lineup ran from Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Bono and The Edge, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, and Common to Christina Aguilera, Eddie Vedder, Marc Anthony, Tems, and The Roots, with the night closing on an all-star jam of Stevie Wonder's "Higher Ground." The crowd included Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Rahm Emanuel, Oprah, and David Letterman, Stephen Colbert, and Conan O'Brien.
Donald Trump was not invited. He's previously called the project a total disaster, and his absence made today's frame what it was: four living former commanders-in-chief from both parties, in one shot, at one of the most polarized moments in modern American politics.
Their faces told slightly different stories. Obama looked warmly engaged, Clinton grinned wide, Biden managed a quieter smile, and Bush kept it stoic.
