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Ever since the presidential portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama (by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively) were first unveiled, in 2018, crowds have flooded the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, to see them firsthand. Now, more Americans will have that chance thanks to a countrywide tour organized by the Smithsonian. First up? The Art Institute of Chicago, where the presidential couple went on their first date. Because they have been so popular and because they have really redefined portraiture and brought about important discussions around representation, we thought it would be important to share them with the nation and have venues in all different parts of the country, Dorothy Moss, curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, told the Chicago Sun-Times. The show runs June 18 through August 15 and will travel to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, Atlantas High Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The Catholic Diocese of Paris is seeking $7 million to restore the interior of Notre-Dame Cathedral after it was nearly destroyed when a massive fire broke out two years ago. More than $970 million has already been pledged by private donors for the painstaking restoration, which French president Emmanuel Macron vowed to complete by 2024. Michael Aupetit, the Archbishop of Paris, remarked that the goal is to bring the cathedral into the 21st century, while ensuring the preservation of its identity in the spirit of the Christian tradition. The funds would be used to update the tour layout for the cathedrals nearly six million annual visitors, as well as new furniture, lighting, and sound systems.

The single-family home in Tempe, Arizona is a test case the organization could use in the future to build homes more efficiently and at a more affordable cost, thus increasing scalability. Approximately 7080 percent of the homewhich has three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a view of Clark Parkwill be 3D printed. Besides reducing construction costs, the method has another benefit: Using the printer would also help Habitat Central Arizona to build during its hottest season, a time when building typically slows since temperatures are too extreme and would put staff and volunteers at risk.

Instagram, the Brooklyn Museum, and a group of esteemed designers recently launched #BlackDesignVisionaries, a new initiative that aims to empower todays leading Black creatives. The program will award $130,000 in grantsthese include three $10,000 Aspiring Designer Grants for Black designers between the ages of 18 and 30 and a $100,000 Small Business Grant for a Black-led design business thats been in operation for less than ten years. If we succeed in pushing culture forward and building a more equitable global design community, well be serving not just Black designers but everyone who will benefit from a more diverse representation of design talent shaping our world, Kristen Joy Watts, a creative director at Instagram, said in a statement. Applications to submit to #BlackDesignVisionaries will be open through July 16; the shortlist, selected by a grant committee that includes Antwaun Sargent, Ruth E. Carter, and Heron Preston, will be announced in the fall.

The pandemic continues to wreak havoc on brick-and-mortar retail. Earlier this week, Washington Prime Groupan Ohio company that owns more than 100 malls across the United Statesfiled for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing pandemic-related shutdowns. The bankruptcy shows that while things are now getting back to normal, many of the scars left by the pandemic have not fully healed, Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData, tells CNN. Strong balance sheets and sound operations are needed to see property companies through this period.

The French fashion designers high-heeled wedge sneaker became a cultural flashpoint when it was released ten years ago, causing a fierce debate between critics who widely panned the hybrid shoe and celebrities and influencers who caused it to sell out. (At one point there was a six-month waiting list for a pair.) Now a new version has arrived with double the heel height as its predecessor. One thing thats changed since the original dropped in 2011: chunky sneaker culture has become one of streetwears hottest fads.

Sacai designer Chitose Abe and Dior mens artistic director Kim Jones are teaming up to launch a 57-piece menswear capsule collection of ready-to-wear, bags, and accessories in November. The collaboration between the Japanese luxury brand and the heritage French fashion house, its first co-branded collection, will also feature a custom amalgamated logo with Sacai written in the i of Dior.

The New Yorker investigates whether or not Proust had a thing for caged rats.

Samsung gives the obsolete floppy disk save icon a contemporary refresh.

Ikea and Sonos launch an audio speaker that resembles a picture frame.

The Girl Scouts are sitting on a surplus of 15 million unsold cookie boxes.

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The Obama Portraits Embark on a National Tour, and Other News - Surface Magazine

CHICAGO Former President of the United States Barack Obama will close the ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition (Virtual) Closing Session. He will appear noon 1 p.m. CT, Tuesday, June 29, 2021, in conversation with Lonnie G. Bunch III, the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian and first African American appointed to the role. They will be introduced by Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., president of the American Library Association.

Obama will discuss A Promised Land, the stirring first volume of his presidential memoirs that was released in November 2020 by Crown, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House. In it, Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidencya time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

Few presidents have walked a more improbable path to the White House. Born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya,Barack Obamawas raised with help from his grandparents, whose generosity of spirit reflected their Midwestern roots.

After working his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans, Obama moved to Chicago, where he worked with a group of churches to help rebuild communities devastated by the closure of local steel plants. That experience honed his belief in the power of uniting ordinary people around a politics of purpose and in the hard work of citizenship to bring about positive change. In law school, he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He then returned to Illinois to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago and begin a career in public service, winning seats in the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate.

On Nov. 4, 2008, Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, winning more votes than any candidate in history. He took office at a moment of crisis unlike any America had seen in decades a nation at war, a planet in peril, the American Dream itself threatened by the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression. And yet, despite all manner of political obstruction, Obamas leadership helped rescue the economy, revitalize the American auto industry, reform the health care system to cover another 20 million Americans, and put the country on a firm course to a clean energy future all while overseeing the longest stretch of job creation in American history. On the world stage, Obamas belief in Americas indispensable leadership and strong, principled diplomacy helped wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, decimate al-Qaeda and eliminate the worlds most wanted terrorists, shut down Irans nuclear weapons program, open a new chapter with the people of Cuba, and unite humanity in coordinated action to combat a changing climate.

In times of great challenge and change, President Obamas leadership ushered in a stronger economy, a more equal society, a nation more secure at home and more respected around the world. The Obama years were ones in which more people not only began to see themselves in the changing face of America, but to see America the way he always has as the only place on Earth where so many of our stories could even be possible.

Obama and his wife, Former First Lady Michelle Obama, are the proud parents of two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

As secretary of the Smithsonian, Bunch oversees 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, numerous research centers, and several education units and centers. Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonians National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is the first historian appointed to the role.

Registrationfor the conference is open. Media interested in registering for the session may contact Macey Morales, deputy director, ALA Communications and Marketing Office at mmorales@ala.org.

ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition attendees will have access to more than 200 educational sessions in the areas of Library Services, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, Leadership, Teaching & Learning, Technology, Library Workplace, and more. Additionally, many of the News You Can Use series; interactive Discussion Groups; and President and Chair Programs provide an excellent opportunity for attendees to share thoughts amongst their peers.

The conference launches on Wednesday, June 23 with a full day dedicated to The Library Marketplace, showcasing as many as 300 exhibitors offering innovative resources for libraries; 11 presentation stages that will highlight notable and genre-specific keynotes; publisher-led spotlight sessions on new book titles; networking opportunities, giveaways, and more.

Get updates from the 2021 ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition (Virtual) websitealaannual.organd follow the hashtag#alaac21 and social media:Instagram,ALA Twitter, andALA Facebook.

About the American Library AssociationThe American Library Association (ALA)is the foremost national organization providing resources to inspire library and information professionals to transform their communities through essential programs and services. For more than 140 years, the ALA has been the trusted voice for academic, public, school, government and special libraries, advocating for the profession and the librarys role in enhancing learning and ensuring access to information for all. For more information, visitala.org.

About Penguin Random HouseCrown is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, the worlds largest trade book publisher, is dedicated to its mission of nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere. The company, which employs 10,000 people globally, was formed on July 1, 2013, by Bertelsmann and Pearson. As of April 1, 2020, Bertelsmann is full owner of the company. With more than 300 imprints and brands on six continents, Penguin Random House comprises adult and childrens fiction and nonfiction print and digital English- and Spanish-language trade book publishing businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide. With 15,000 new titles, and 600 million print, audio and eBooks sold annually, Penguin Random Houses publishing lists include more than 80 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the worlds most widely read authors.

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Former President of the United States Barack Obama will headline ALA Annual Conference & Exhibition (Virtual) Closing Session - ala.org

Former President Barack Obama talked with members of The Economic Club of Chicago, in anticipation of the groundbreaking of the Obama Presidential Center on the city's South Side. AP Domestic

CHICAGO After years of pushback by park preservationists and community groups concerned about displacement, the Obama Presidential Center is expected to break ground this fall,and the former president visited with residents ofthe area this week.

"Traditionally I think presidential libraries can be a little backward-looking ... kind of a mausoleum in the sense that not much is happening," Barack Obama said Friday at a virtual event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago. "Our thought was, well, lets create an institution that is alive and vibrant and is bringing people together."

The $500 million center, designed by architects Todd Williams and Billie Tsien, is expected to be located in Jackson Park on the city's South Side. The center is expected to consist of a museum, forum, public library, plaza, playground and pedestrian and bicycle paths. The Obama Foundation said it hopes the center brings 700,000 people to the South Side every year.

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Former President Barack Obama speaks at a community event on the Presidential Center at the South Shore Cultural Center, Wednesday, May 3, 2017, in Chicago.(Photo: Nam Y. Huh, AP)

The site will be located near where Barack and Michelle Obama first met, settled down and had their daughters. The location is near the University of Chicago Law School, where Obama taught constitutional law. It's also a few miles from where Michelle grew up and several miles from where Obama worked as a community organizer. Obama represented the area in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004.

This week, Obama met with local business owners in surrounding neighborhoodsand made a surprise visit to ayouth football team practice.People who live within a two-mile radius of thesite are predominantly low-income, according to a 2017 report from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and many live in historically disinvested communites.

"Unfortunately, there are communities that have experienced extraordinary trouble and difficulty for decades," Obama said. "Its one of the reasons I think the Obama Presidential Center can be a powerful engine. It gives us an opportunity to locate in a community and have a presence that signifies this is an important part of our city."

Then-Illinois Democratic Senate candidate Barack Obama leaves with his wife Michelle, daughters Sasha, front left, and Malia after voting at Catholic Theological union polling place in Chicago on Nov. 2, 2004.(Photo: NAM Y HUH, AP)

The Foundation announced the location of the center in 2016, but the project was delayed by a lengthy federal review process required because the center's location, Jackson Park, is included in the National Register of Historic Places. The park was designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and remodeled for the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition.

The National Park Service and Federal Highway Administration concluded their four-year review in February, andChicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said physical construction would begin as early as August.

Several local groups, including park preservationists and a coalition of community organizations,have raised concerns about the projectfor years.

Park preservationists have warned about the effects on the historic parkland and have proposed an alternative location for the center. In 2018, a groupled by the nonprofit Protect Our Parkssued the city and the Park District.

"This is a 150-year-old work of art, and it is regarded widely as one of the most magnificent landscaped parks in America," said plaintiff Tom Mitchell, a professorat the University of Chicago who teaches a course on the history of landscape. "Its going to be a very, very ugly moment when the bulldozers arrive and people see these century-old trees carted away."

A photo of Jackson Park in Chicago in May, 2015.(Photo: Paul Beaty, AP)

In 2020, an appelete court whereJustice Amy Coney Barrett sat at the time said the suitlacked standing. Last year, the group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit the appellate court decision, but the high court denied the petition in April. Barrett was not involved in the consideration, according to the court.

Michael Rachlis, who is part of the Protect Our Parks legal team, said the group planned to filea preliminary injuction motion before the court this month to request work on the center be stayed.

"If youre going to try to seize a huge portion of a public park, you should have a very good reason, and there should be no feasible alternatives," Mitchell said. "In this case, there are feasible and superior alternatives."

Valerie Jarrett, president of the Foundation, acknowledged the expected legal action at the virtual event Friday.

"We expect the same small group will sue us again going forward and try to get a restraining order," she said. "But we are very confident we're on solid legal footing."

The decision to build Barack Obama's presidential library in Chicago's lakefront Jackson Park rather than a nearby impoverished neighborhood has left some residents worried the museum will deliver less of a boost to the South Side. Some say Washington Park, a mile to the west, has greater needs because of poverty and population decline, and the location decision is a missed opportunity to spur development there.(Photo: E. Jason Wambsgans, AP)

Meanwhile, acollection of community organizations under the banner of theObama Community Benefits Agreement Coalition has also voiced concern that longtime residents of the areas surrounding the site are at risk of beingpriced out of their neighborhoods.

"The reason the center is coming to the South Side is because these are the people who elected Barack Obama. These people shouldnt be punished for that. They should be able to benefit from whats going on," said Dixon Romeo, a member of the coaliton and resident of the South Shore neighborhood, where Michelle Obama grew up.

Area residents arepredominantly renters, according to the 2017 report.Nearly half of renters have annual incomes less than $20,000, eviction rates are some of the highest in the city, and rentis rising in newly renovated and new construction units, which the majority of current renters cannot afford, according to the report.

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The coalition launched a years-long campaign demanding a community benefits agreement to protect residents from displacement, and the city and Foundation have since made a series of promises to address the coalition's concerns.

In September, the city adopted an ordinancefor the Woodlawn neighborhood mandating affordability requirements on all rental and for-sale housing developed on city-owned residential land and appropriating about $4.5 million and leveraginganother $5 million in loan funds to help rehabilitate existing affordable housing.

The ordinance also created a "Right of First Refusal Pilot Program" in the neighborhood that would require an owner of a building with 10 or more units to give tenants an exclusive opportunity to make an offer on the property prior to its sale.

However, several other neighborhoods in the area such as Grand Crossing, South Shore and Hyde Park have not received similar provisions.

"It (the ordinance) isnot enough for Woodlawn, but its better than what every other neighborhood got because we all got nothing," Romeo said. "Were already starting to see the effects and the signs of displacement."

For its part, the Foundation committed to awarding 50% of the subcontracting packages for the center to minority-, women-, or veteran-owned businesses, with 35% of workers living on the South and West Sides. In March, the Foundation created a "We Can Build It Consortium" to get more local residents involved in the building trades and committed $850,000 to train 400 new apprentices from the South and West Sides.

The Foundation also donated up to $3.5 million to the citytocover the cost of construction of the multi-purpose artificial turf field nearby.

"This could mean a transformation of the community, and that transformation is either going to mean equitable development or displacement," Romeo said.

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Obama Presidential Center expected to break ground this fall after years of opposition, concern - USA TODAY

This is 2009 and health care all over again, said Adam Jentleson, who was an aide to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader that year.

But efforts to find a bipartisan path forward continue to flounder.

Partisan politics are worse now than back in the days of the A.C.A., Mr. Baucus said this week, and they were plenty partisan then.

The template for todays infrastructure stalemate was set in 2009. Then as now, a small group of senators, Democratic and Republican, were empowered to seek a deal.

It was going to be done in a bipartisan way, with a goal of doing like you do other social programs in the United States, like civil rights and Medicare and Medicaid they all pass with wide bipartisan majorities, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who was then the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said in a 2014 interview.

Then as now, if no compromise could be reached, Democrats needed every single senator in their party to push through a bill. That meant holding all 60 together in 2009 to beat a Republican filibuster; today, Democrats need all 50 of their members to use a budget maneuver called reconciliation to steer clear of a filibuster and pass legislation with a simple majority.

The reality was there were moderate Democrats who were very uneasy about doing health care, period, and certainly about doing it in a partisan way, Mr. Selib said this week. The only way to go 60-for-60 was to show Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Evan Bayh that we were going to do everything to make it bipartisan, that we were not going to leave anything on the field.

Mr. Nelson, a conservative Nebraskan, and Ms. Lincoln, an embattled Arkansan, are long gone, but today, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona need the same assuaging.

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Infrastructure Talks Recall Heated Debate Over Obama Healthcare - The New York Times

Celebrities are paying their respects to Breonna Taylor on what wouldve been her 28th birthday.

On March 13, 2020, the 26-year-old African American woman died after undercover Louisville police officers burst into her home, where she lay asleep with her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, and opened fire, striking Taylor five times. The officers Myles Cosgrove, Brett Hankison and Jonathan Mattingly have not been charged in Taylors death.

Taylors killing, in addition to that of George Floyd two months later, sparked protests worldwide calling for an end to police brutality and systemic racism. Taylor became a symbol of Americas failure to protect Black women.

On Saturday, June 5, public figures used Taylors birthday as an opportunity to not only honor the young womans memory but reaffirm their commitment to lasting change.

Beyonc wished Taylor a happy heavenly birthday on her official website, which the popular fan account @BeyLegion then tweeted on Queen Bs behalf. She also included an adorable photo of Taylor as a baby.

Sharing the artwork Amy Sherald created for Vanity Fair last August, former FLOTUS Michelle Obama wrote, Thinking of you today, Breonna.

Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis also wished Breonna a happy birthday, promising that, We will never forget. We will always keep fighting.

Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., retweeted one of Taylors own celebratory tweets from her 25th birthday, or rather Bre Day, in 2018.

Tennis legend Billie Jean Kings birthday wishes included a solemn reminder, Breonna was an EMT and a first responder. She was killed in March 2020 by Louisville police who broke into her home looking for someone else. To date, the officers have not been charged.

Rosanna Arquette tweeted about how the tragedy of Taylors death was preventable. We want to be celebrating peoples birthday and graduations while they are alive and thriving not because they were killed by gun violence. Today is Breonna Taylors birthday who was killed in her own home by police officers. Rest in power Breonna.

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Beyonc, Michelle Obama and More Remember Breonna Taylor on Her Heavenly Birthday - TheWrap