WALLS of POWER

What's the difference between a collector and a commander-in-chief? As the array of art at the new Obama Presidential Center, opening in June in Chicago, proves, it's not as clear-cut as you might think.

- CAROL KINO

" This is incredible!" Virginia Shore, curator of art commissions for Chicago's Obama Presidential Center, says to the painter Aliza Nisenbaum, as they look at work in Nisenbaum's Long Island City studio. "It's astonishing, unforgettable!" echoes Louise Bernard, the director of the center's museum. "We love all the layered storytelling, but also the vibrancy of the colors and the relationships and associations." It's a bright, chilly afternoon, and Shore and Bernard are in town catching up with Nisenbaum, who recently completed a 70-foot mural that's already in Chicago, waiting to be installed in the center's library before it opens on June 19. On the walls hang several small portraits of young women, some of whom also posed for the mural. Soon these pictures too will be sent to Chicago for an art fair, where Nisenbaum will speak with Shore about the evolution of her project. But right now everyone has gathered around a digital image of the larger piece, which Nisenbaum painted on 12 oil-on-linen panels because the complete work was too large to fit into her studio. "I've actually never seen the whole thing together," she says. Although the artist, who grew up in Mexico City, originally rose to notice with a group of portraits of undocumented immigrants, she is increasingly becoming known for monumental works that continue the tradition of Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo.