‘Tastemaker in chief?’ We look back on Obama’s arts legacy.

For eight years, President Barack Obama was commander in chief. But was he also "tastemaker in chief"?

With Obama, "you always wanted to know what the book was next to his bed and what was on his iPod, right?” says Geoff Edgers, national arts reporter for The Washington Post. “I don’t think we had that before."

Last year alone, Obama brought musical acts like Common, The Lumineers, Usher, Kendrick Lamar, Janelle Monae, The Dap-Kings, Blake Shelton, Esperanza Spalding and more to Pennsylvania Avenue.

In 2009, Obama invited the playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda to the White House, where he workshopped a song befitting the president from his planned hip-hop “concept album.” Last year, Miranda reprised the song at the White House with the cast of "Hamilton" — the hit Broadway musical that his concept grew into.

“Not to take undue credit or anything, but this is definitely the room where it happened,” Obama joked.

But bringing all that cultural power tothe White House came with trade-offs: For one, Edgers says the former president never made it to the National Gallery of Art, not even once.

“That’s a huge departure,” he notes. “I mean, Laura Bush would go over there more than a dozen times. [The Obamas] didn't participate in a fundraiser for the Ford Theatre, which might not seem like a huge deal but it's something that's done by all presidents.” Without the Obamas, the theater ended up canceling its fundraiser last year.

Then there's arts governance, an area that Obama wasn't always on top of. For example, in 2014, Obama nominated Jane Chu as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts — more than a year after the previous chairman had retired.

And while he introduced the Turnaround Arts Initiative, designed to bring art and music education to some of the nation’s lowest-performing schools, the program currently serves just 68 of them (many more schools could benefit from an arts infusion like that).

So, what will Obama’s arts legacy actually look like? Edgers respectfully submits that Obama “basically was the greatest party host we’ve ever had.”

From his White House platform, Obama put a spotlight on diverse types of art, and he clearly delighted in them all. For some, that made a big difference.

“If there was an event, a party, an opening … a concert, the right people were going to be playing, the right people [were] going to be speaking, the right books were going to be read,” Edgers says. “We just knew that this guy understood culture. And for those of us who love good art, it made us proud.”

And the Obama White House was full of good art, by the way. Moving in, the first family found that much of its permanent collection was made up of 18th- and 19th-century portraits of famous white men. According to Dana Miller, formerly a senior curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, that’s pretty much what you could expect. But happily, it didn’t last.

“The Obamas wanted to be surrounded by art that reflected more of their experience in the 20th century,” she says. “[They] were frequent visitors to the Art Institute of Chicago. They had their first date there.”

So, they borrowed art from museums, bringing in paintings by women and artists of color. They added abstract and modern pieces, too. And for the Oval Office, the Whitney loaned two paintings by Edward Hopper, a favorite artist of President Obama’s.

Miller has sometimes caught glimpses of these paintings in the background of press photographs. They’re both of barns, set against dusty blue and green landscapes.

“[They’re] one of those details people absorb but might not notice, that becomes, I think, an important part of the history of this country,” she says.

Sometimes, though, she admits that she’d rather not see the paintings: “Sometimes I get forwarded photographs of the president throwing a football in the Oval Office, and [I] sort of pretend like I don't see it.”

'Music is bigger than politics'

But the Obamas weren’t just consumersof art while in the White House: They also participated in pop culture in a way that differed from past first families. Like when President Obama "slow-jammed the news" on “The Tonight Show” and appeared on "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis." (When Galifianakis famously asked him, “How does it feel to be the last black president?” Obama shot back with, “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?”)

The former first lady showed her chops, too, singing about empowering girls during an episode of “Carpool Karaoke” with James Corden and Missy Elliott.

Saxophonist and composer Bobby Watson, who has played for two presidents — most recently, he performed at the White House last spring for its International Jazz Day celebration — enjoyed seeing Obama's passion for the arts. Especially music. 

“We knew from day one that the Obamas loved music, rhythm and blues, jazz, hip-hop,” he says. “I mean, it's part of their life, it’s part of their fabric.”

At the White House that day, Watson says he felt like he was at home. It demonstrates how “Music is bigger than politics,” he says. “And so when a president brings in music, he is connecting so many people, more than the greatest speech he could ever give.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI's Studio 360.