A look inside the US President’s Oval Office

“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,” she said.

Busts of Martin Luther King jnr and Robert F Kennedy flank a fireplace in the office. Biden often refers to the impact that both men made on the country as part of the Civil Rights movement.

Biden is also giving a nod to segments of the Democratic Party’s base via historic references. Behind the Resolute desk is a bust of Cesar Chavez. The office also includes busts of Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and a sculpture by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to the late Senator Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, the first Japanese-American elected to both houses of Congress.

A painting of Benjamin Franklin is intended to represent Biden’s interest in following science. The painting is stationed near a moon rock set on a bookshelf that is intended to remind Americans of the ambition and accompaniments of earlier generations.

President Donald Trump’s light gold drapes have been replaced with a different, darker shade of gold that hung in president Bill Clinton’s Oval Office. The dark blue rug was also in the office during the Clinton administration.

The furniture was switched out on Inauguration Day, an aide said. During a tour a reporter was asked to avoid stepping on the freshly vacuumed rug so that it would be in pristine condition when Biden arrived. Seeing a fleck of dirt on the rug, one aide stooped down to remove it.

Gone are the flags of branches of the military that Trump displayed behind the Resolute Desk. Biden has installed an American flag and another with a presidential seal.

Also removed was the portrait of former President Andrew Jackson that Trump hung in his office. Trump and Jackson both ran as populists, and Jackson was the first president to be directly elected and he proposed ending the Electoral College.

But for many the decision reinforced some of the allegations of racism coming from the White House. Jackson kept enslaved people and signed the Indian Removal Act, which led to thousands of Native American deaths as tens of thousands were forced to relocate to make room for white settlers.

The act helped lead to the “Trail of Tears,” in which an estimated 4000 Cherokee died during the harsh conditions of a long march during a forced relocation in 1838 and 1839. The Cherokees called Jackson “Indian killer”; the Creek called him “Sharp Knife.”

The portrait drew ire, particularly during a November 2017 Oval Office event when the Jackson portrait served as a backdrop for Trump as he was honouring Native American “code talkers”.

Trump also reinstalled a bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office. It had originally been loaned to George W Bush by the British and then returned as Obama took office. A nearly identical bust stood just outside the office in Obama’s private residence.

When asked about the bust in 2016, Obama cited aesthetics. “There are only so many tables where you can put busts – otherwise it starts looking a little cluttered,” Obama said.

Loading

Obama did have a bust of Martin Luther King jnr in the Oval Office, which Trump kept, though he moved it to a different part of the office.

The pièce de résistance in Obama’s Oval Office was the Emancipation Proclamation, the document signed by Abraham Lincoln that freed all enslaved people in the Confederate states.

One aspect of the office that hasn’t changed: the Resolute Desk, used by Trump and several previous presidents. An aide said that it had not been touched since Trump left on Wednesday morning.

The Washington Post