What does a major cultural landmark bring to a city, and how do the people who live around it help shape its future?

On October 9, 2026, The Block Museum of Art welcomed journalist Natalie Y. Moore and historian Leslie M. Harris for a conversation about the Obama Presidential Center and its place in Chicago’s architectural, cultural, and racial landscape. Presented in conjunction with Picturing the Modern Metropolis: Prints and Photographs from the Block’s Collection, the program explored how a new institution could reflect and reshape the city around it.

Moore, senior lecturer and director of audio journalism programming at Northwestern’s Medill School, drew on more than a decade of reporting on the center. Harris, professor of history and Black Studies at Northwestern, brought a historian’s perspective to its interpretation of the past and ambitions for the future.

Moore situated the center within the everyday life of Jackson Park, describing family reunions, barbecues, and house music gatherings that had long made it a place of connection. Challenging descriptions of the park as underused, she examined how race shaped perceptions of public space and whose activities were recognized. She also traced how community input influenced the campus, including the addition of a Chicago Public Library branch.

The conversation addressed residents’ hopes for investment alongside concerns about housing affordability and displacement. Moore discussed the city’s responsibility in shaping neighborhood development and cautioned against confident predictions of either sweeping economic benefits or rapid transformation. Her observations emphasized the importance of sustained local journalism in assessing promises and documenting change.

Moore and Harris also considered how public art and spaces for recreation and creative work invited people to gather. Their discussion connected these everyday encounters to the center’s broader civic aspirations. Reflecting on exhibitions about constitutional rights, social movements, and American democracy, they asked how a presidential center could encourage visitors to look back while considering their own role in shaping the future.

Watch the full conversation below.

About the Speakers

Natalie Y. Moore is a senior lecturer and director of audio journalism programming at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.  The Chicago native is known for her reporting on segregation and inequality. For 17 years, she was a reporter and editor at WBEZ. Moore has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Moore’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. She is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016. She is also co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of an American Gang and Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.  Moore writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times.  Moore also is a playwright. “The Billboard,” a play about abortion was produced by 16th Street Theater in 2022and won a Jeff Award for best new work/short run.

Leslie M. Harris is Professor of History and Black Studies at Northwestern University. A specialist in Pre-Civil War African American history, she has authored or co-edited six books, including award winning In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City (2003) and Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (2019). Harris has also participated in a number of public history projects and accompanying books. Harris is currently completing Leaving New Orleans: A Personal Urban History, a book that combines memoir with family, urban and environmental histories to explore the multiple meanings of New Orleans from its founding through its uncertain future amid climate change.  Harris received her undergraduate degree at Columbia and her doctoral degree at Stanford.  Before moving to Northwestern, she taught for 21 years at Emory University. Her work has also been supported by the Newberry Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, the Mellon and Ford Foundations, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas, and the University of Maryland.