Obama Presidential Center to feature Obergefell marriage certificate, Sesame Street puppets

The upcoming Obama Presidential Center Museum could feature a host of offbeat items — including macaroni sculptures of the former president, marshmallow guns and Sesame Street puppets featured in an episode former first lady Michelle Obama appeared on.

The museum, which will open in Chicago, Ill., has so far collected around 3,000 items, People reported on Monday. Items include “everything from old business cards belonging to a young Michelle Robinson to child-made macaroni sculptures in the shape of the former president,” according to the outlet.

Museum materials will also include the iconic HOPE poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and the marriage certificate from Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, the couple behind the historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage during Obama’s presidency, according to staffers who spoke to People.

The Obama Foundation, a private entity, is behind the $830 million project. The foundation selected the museum’s site on the south side of Chicago at Jackson Park in 2016.

The Obamas celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony for the museum last September. Michelle Obama said in a video announcing the ceremony that the museum’s placement near Jackson Park “reminded us why the South Side and the people who live here are so special.”

“It’s reaffirmed what Barack and I always believed, that the future here is as bright as it is anywhere,” she said.

According to People, donations have poured in, with some submitting as many as 100 items, including special mementos like Joey Hudy’s marshmallow gun. When Hudy was 14, the marshmallow cannon he presented at a White house science fair so impressed Obama that he fired the cannon and remarked on the genius of the invention.

“For a lot of donors, it’s a little bittersweet giving these items to the museum — these are things from an important part of their life or something that they created,” said Rob Kent, a registrar for the museum, to People.

The Obama Presidential Center Museum is meant to represent a piece of Obama’s legacy. In a letter posted ahead of the groundbreaking ceremony last year, Barack Obama said the Obama Foundation and all its projects are a reflection of what he most stood for when he first ran for president: hope.

“From my early days organizing on the streets of the South Side to my hardest days in the White House, hope—the insistence that something better awaits if we’re willing to put in the effort—has guided my work,” he said.