Michael Strautmanis, chief Corporate Affairs officer at the Obama Foundation, speaks Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy.
LAYLA VINSON
Staff writer
In his Interfaith Lecture at 2 p.m. Tuesday in the Hall of Philosophy, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer of the Obama Foundation Michael Strautmanis highlighted the importance of art, inspiration and connection. Honoring the legacy and impact of the Foundation reflected in the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Strautmanis urged the audience to visit the Center and further uphold its values of community and connection — values he said Chautauqua Institution shares with the Center.
“I learned something last month when we opened the Center: It actually isn’t just the buildings and the park and the art that makes the Obama Presidential Center a special place. It’s the people,” Strautmanis said.
He said he has watched the Center, located in the South Side of Chicago in Jackson Park, come alive with diverse groups of people that join together for events ranging from family reunions to morning yoga. “The magic arrived as people started to come and make it their own.”
Strautmanis related the Center to Chautauqua because of their common purpose of creating a third space designed for community and gathering. Strautmanis jokingly deemed his presentation a “40-minute commercial,” hoping to convince listeners to visit the Center, and he spotlighted the impact of numerous artists who have collaborated to turn ideas to reality.
“Art is essential to democracy because democracy is based on the idea that everyone has the opportunity — the responsibility — to come together to create the world that they want to see,” Strautmanis said. “And in order to do that, you’ve got to be inspired. You’ve got to be inspired to dream outside of your circumstances and to envision that better world.”
Tying into the Week Five Theme: “The Creative Spirit: Art, Resilience and the Soulful Work of Making,” Strautmanis referred to themes from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Noting the routine tendency of those who speak in spiritual terms to refer to God as creator yet seldom see creator as a literal term for artists, Cameron suggests readers take the term quite literally.
“We are made in the image of God,” Stautmanis followed. “And if we are made in the image of God, and we are image bearers, then we are creators, and we have that spark inside of us. Indeed, the story of Genesis tells us … our first task in the garden — to cultivate, to create, to nurture and build the world the God bestowed upon us.”
Strautmanis underlined prominent creators and their innovations, such as Maya Lin, Martin Puryear, Marie Watt, Nick Cave, Mark Bradford, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and praised their works not only as inspirational, but crucial in designing spaces that can “ennoble and enable” connection and conversation on account of its campus-like structure overflowing with creativity. Many of the artworks these artists have made throughout their careers have been commissioned based on concepts and values rooted in pluralism, according to Strautmanis.
“[Art is] designed to pull you into a conversation. That conversation might make you feel seen, known. That conversation might make you feel really uncomfortable and have you thinking about truths that you might rather ignore at that moment,” Strautmanis said.
Strautmanis referenced a simplistic explanation from a friend equating pluralism to an American potluck dinner and stressed the necessity of welcoming differing stories, traditions and beliefs to our own table.
Explaining why the center includes 28 original commissions of public art, 18 acres of parkland, a playground and more facilities that foster a welcoming third space for the community, Stautmanis deemed the expansive artwork as reflective of “the responsibility of people to build and create our future” and the Obama legacy.
Pursuing that future through work grounded in joy and grace, both values learned from his collaboration with Michelle and Barack Obama, Strautmanis highlighted the endeavors of three of young civic leaders: Neel McNeill, Legacy Russell and Chris Burton. Using creative mediums such as theater, contemporary art and education, each leader has worked to foster spaces of opportunity and drive forward community change across the nation.
“What do we train these leaders in? Values,” Strautmanis said. “We call our values ‘hope to action,’ and that is really the work of the Obama Foundation. We start with hope, that inspiration, that idea sparked by creativity, sparked by beauty, sparked by anger at the world that we want to see but don’t yet live in today. But we don’t want people just to stay in hope; we’ve got to move to action.”
Citing the foundation’s involvement across countries, languages, disciplines, perspectives and some sources of action, Strautmanis urged the audience to be intentional in their own lives as well.
While acknowledging that current issues can feel too big to tackle at an individual level, Strautmanis encouraged individuals to step outside of the small ecosystems that form on social media and seek out catalytic forms of collaboration and conversation.
“There are no easy answers in the world we see today, but I believe that there is only one choice, that is, to be inspired. That is, to have hope. That is, to find and experience things that stir the soul. That is, to invest in art. That is, to see the divine in your world and in yourself, and to find others in a potluck nation; not asking them to place their beliefs on the side and only believe what you believe and see the world that you see — but with shared values and a spirit that invokes the very columns that we stand in today. That we do the work to create a better tomorrow,” Strautmanis concluded.
