The botany in Obama's official portrait represents his history

President Obama's official portrait uses flowers to tell his story.

Infographic by Tom McNamara

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. is full of familiar faces. Since it opened in 1968, the museum's sole purpose has been to showcase the images of "men and women who have made significant contributions to the history, development, and culture of the people of the United States." A visitor could wander the halls for hours, but there's now more reason to high-tail it to the Presidential Gallery. As of February 12, former President Barack Obama's portrait has been added to the hall, and with it some truly beautiful botanicals.

Painted by pattern-loving portraitist Kehinde Wiley, the piece features Obama seated in front of a fortress of leaves. From this deep green background emerges three types of flowers, each representing a part of the former president's history. The white flowers are jasmine, representing Obama's birthplace and childhood in Hawaii. The pink and gold flowers are chrysanthemums, the official flower of Chicago, where Obama became a community organizer and, ultimately, a senator of Illinois. And the purple flowers are African blue lilies, a reminder of his father, Barack Obama, Sr., a Kenyan man.

While you could take the flowers at face value—they're almost so beautiful they don't need an explanation—Marc Hachadourian of the New York Botanical Garden says you'd be selling yourself short. “There’s a great language of flowers," he says. While we might not all use the same word for "love," we know that roses are the go-to Valentine's Day botanical. The same is true for white flowers as symbols of purity and certain spookier plants are unspoken symbols of death and decay.

Read More at:
https://www.popsci.com/flower-symbolism-barack-obama-portrait

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