AFTER FUMIGATION

Biden revamps the Oval Office: President adds bust of Cesar Chavez and removes controversial portrait

Josh Marcus THE INDEPENDENT
Thu, January 21, 2021

The Oval Office of the White House is newly redecorated for the first day of President Joe Biden's administration, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Washington.((AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The incoming Biden administration isn’t just changing policy: it’s redecorating the White House too. It’s part pageantry, part politics, part personal — like everything about being president.

During Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies, the 90-person White House facilities staff began moving the Bidens in a process that reportedly took just five hours. While the Bidens planned to move in on 20 January, they reportedly won’t dive all the way into personalising the White House or bringing in an interior decorator.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the new first family from adding a few new touches, and they’ll eventually get more than $1 million to rework one of the most famous buildings on Earth. Here’s what they’ve done so far:

A statue of a civil rights icon

One notable addition is a bust of legendary farm workers’ rights organiser Cesar Chavez installed behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

"Placing a bust of my father in the Oval Office symbolises the hopeful new day that is dawning for our nation," Chavez's son Paul Chavez, president of the Cesar Chavez Foundation, told NBC. “That isn't just because it honours my dad, but more importantly because it represents faith and empowerment for an entire people on whose behalf he fought and sacrificed.”

Previously, the statue, by sculptor Paul Saurez, was in La Paz, California, at Cesar Chavez National Monument, and was sent to DC at the request of the White House. Chavez died in 1993.

There are also now busts of Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt in the Oval Office.

Removing a highly controversial populist—and a portrait of one

If the White House is the symbol of the presidency, the Oval Office is the heart of the White House, which is why president Trump’s decision to install a portrait of former US president Andrew Jackson was so controversial.

Mr Trump was probably trying to borrow some populist shine from Mr Jackson, who was president between 1829 and 1837 and famously held a raucous inauguration party at the White House, but for many the picture was a reminder of the native American genocide Mr Jackson helped carry out.

Mr Jackson, who owned enslaved people, signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to the deaths of thousands of native people when they were forcibly marched off their lands to allow for white settlement.

Joe Biden chose a different course, replacing him with the Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, famous for his witticisms and various roles in the creation of the United States.

New campaign photos (featuring masks)

Joe Biden’s campaign was markedly different from Donald Trump’s for its regular mask-wearing during the pandemic, and that’s shown up in the decor, too, with new photos from the campaign trail of the Bidens wearing their protective gear.

And shelter dogs

While not exactly decor, the addition of the Bidens’ dogs, adopted German shepherds Champ and Major, will change the look of the place, after the Trumps were the first first family in years not to have a White House pooch.

The Bidens will also mark a new change because Champ and Major are reportedly the first adopted White House doggos.

Re-invigorate the roses?

While there’s no word yet on whether this will happen, some online are urging the Bidens to restore the White House Rose Garden after controversial renovations from former first lady Melania Trump that included ripping out plants and adding new paved walkways.

Melania under fire again for Rose Garden after JFK decorations

Golf and gold: Trump’s renovations to the White House

There are few things president Trump loved more than golf and gold, and his White House changes reflected that. They included installing a $50,000, room-size golf simulator, upgrading the White House bowling alley, as well as new wallpaper, extra TVs, gold drapes, and bringing in rugs used in pasts Republican administrations.

Biden's new-look Oval Office is a nod to past US leadership

Fri, January 22, 2021, BBC

Annotated picture of Joe Biden's Oval Office

Incoming presidents bring their own personal touch to the Oval Office and much is being read into the way Joe Biden has chosen to decorate his new place of work.

The room has been filled with portraits and busts of some of the most iconic and influential leaders of American history.

"It was important for President Biden to walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as president," Ashley Williams, the deputy director of Oval Office operations, told The Washington Post during an exclusive tour.

What will Joe Biden do first?

What kind of vice-president will Harris be?

The other women in Kamala Harris' college photo

Gone is the portrait of Andrew Jackson, the 7th president and a populist with whom President Trump frequently identified and who also faced censure although he was never impeached.

His portrait, to the left of the seat of the Resolute Desk, has been replaced with one of Benjamin Franklin, a founding father who was also a leading writer, scientist and philosopher. The Post said Franklin's portrait was intended to represent President Biden's interest in following science as he attempts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.

From his desk, Mr Biden will look up to see, flanking the fireplace, busts of Rev Martin Luther King Jnr and Robert F Kennedy - two men whose impact on the civil rights movement Biden is said to have frequently referenced.

Other busts around the room include another key figure in the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks. There is also an Allan Houser sculpture depicting a horse and Chiricahua Apache rider once belonging to the Hawaii Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye, the Post reports.
Busts of Rosa Parks and Abraham Lincoln are in President Biden's office

Above the fireplace hangs a large portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, the president who led the country through the Great Depression and World War Two.

The portrait of another former president, Thomas Jefferson, has been paired with a man he frequently disagreed with, the former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton as "hallmarks of how differences of opinion, expressed within the guardrails of the Republic, are essential to democracy", the Post quotes Biden's office as saying.

Portraits of two other celebrated former presidents, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, have also been paired.

Portraits of Jefferson and Hamilton (right and left) have remained beside the fireplace, in a different arrangement, but the central portrait of George Washington has been replaced by one of Franklin D Roosevelt

Many on social media noted, on the table behind Mr Biden, a bust of César Chávez, the Mexican-American labour leader who fought for the rights of farm workers in the 1960s and 70s. His bust sits alongside framed photos of Mr Biden's family.

A bust of César Chávez stands near photos of Mr Biden's family

Flags of the different branches of the military have also been replaced with an American flag and another with a presidential seal.

A controversial bust of Britain's wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill has also gone.

President Trump had promised to restore the bust to the Oval Office after it was removed by his predecessor Barack Obama. The then foreign secretary Boris Johnson - now UK prime minister - had at the time accused Mr Obama of having an "ancestral dislike of the British empire". (A PERJORATIVE REFENCE TO HIS FATHERS COUNTRY OF ORIGIN; THE BRITISH COLONY OF KENYA)

This time, his spokesman, said: "The Oval office is the president's private office and it's up to the president to decorate it as he wishes".

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Mr Biden had replaced the curtains used by Mr Trump in the Oval Office. The curtains have not been changed.