18 June 2026
The OPC museum explores the Obamas’ lives, the Obama campaign and presidency, and democracy at large. Before the full-sized replica of President Obama’s Oval Office stands Cuban-American artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s luscious mixed-media floral mural.
“My first surprise was how humanly sized the White House is,” Campos-Pons recounted on a call regarding a private group visit she did while Obama was in office. There, she saw the Rose Garden and took a natural interest. Flowers often figure into her explorations of memory.
Campos-Pons considers this commission a continuation of her 2021 Galerie Barbara Thumm exhibition for Breonna Taylor. The show’s beauty could almost be called defiant. Still Holding the Scent of Flowers can be read similarly. Campos-Pons based the work on research into the 113-year history of the Rose Garden, which was recently leveled by the new administration.
“I wanted to do something that was like a firework in the sky, but instead of being fireworks, was petals from flowers,” she said. A rich bevy of patriotically diverse blooms appear. Southern Magnolias honor the White House as portal to America’s South. Carrots and broccoli pay tribute to Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. As Campos-Pons’s neighbor observed upon seeing it in her studio, you do smell the flowers.
