Obama examines Marley’s collection of gold and platinum records.
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
After arriving in Jamaica and shaking hands with foreign dignitaries, President Obama made a beeline for the Bob Marley Museum, dedicated to the life of the reggae singer and housed in a spacious Victorian house where Marley lived until his death in 1981.
“I still have all the albums,” he said while touring the museum. It’s no secret that Obama is a longtime fan, having discovered the singer in college.
The museum has preserved rooms including Marley’s recording studio, and displays, among other artifacts, his gold and platinum records, a hologram from his 1978 One Love Peace concert, and his lifetime achievement Grammy. The house is painted red, green, and yellow, and the front yard features a statue of Marley playing guitars among the palm trees.
“One Love” was played from loudspeakers as the president entered through the front door alongside a museum tour guide. Obama spent about 20 minutes taking in the museum.
President Obama at the Bob Marley Museum in Jamaica.
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press.
Mashable reports that only a handful of photographers were invited to document his tour.
The trip marks not only the first presidential visit to Jamaica since 1982, but also the museum’s first presidential visit.
As Obama museum appearances go, this one is pretty tame—in 2014, the president dropped by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum via helicopter for an hour-long tour, shutting down all of Museumplein in the process (see Obama Visit Closes Amsterdam’s Museums). Just a month earlier, he apologized for making a somewhat disparaging comment about art history majors, to which professors and students objected (see President Obama Apologizes for Comment Disparaging Art Historians).