A replica Oval Office near the White House just got a new Trump makeover. Gold flourishes abound
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's glitzier. And there's way more gold.
The People's House museum exhibit has overhauled its replica Oval Office for visitors to experience President Donald Trump's second-term design choices.
Gleaming vases, golden-hued swirling onlays, two dozen portraits in heavy gilded frames and knickknacks crowding nearly every available surface: the same rococo flourishes that Trump has installed in the world's most famous workspace have been recreated down to each wall applique in a museum just up Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
"As political as the Oval Office is, it really is also the office of the American people," said Luke Boorady, managing director of The People's House: A White House Experience. "And we want visitors who come here to feel more connected to this space."
Public tours of the White House do not include the West Wing. So the White House Historical Association set about recreating the Oval Office, opening the exhibit in September 2024. It is the same size as the real one, and visitors often marvel at how small it feels.
A team of specialized designers has been making over the exhibit, visiting Trump's Oval Office while the Republican president was away. Experts in North Carolina worked to recreate Trump's many wall appliques, while one from Indianapolis handled 3D scanning and printing of other specialized objects. California frame-makers did carving by hand for the gold frames of Trump's chosen 24 portraits, and teams from Canada and Virginia worked on replicas of vases and other tabletop pieces, Boorady said.
There are also two mirrors and a copy of the Declaration of Independence, just like in Trump's actual office.
A real estate developer before he became a politician, Trump has revamped the White House to his extravagant tastes as part of his push to leave his mark on the nation's capital while he is still in office.
When asked by Time magazine last week what he would miss most about the White House after he leaves, Trump said, "This beautiful room that nobody should be allowed to rip down. The Oval Office." He said he had asked his chief of staff to make his altered office "a federal landmark."
In addition to filling the Oval Office with bling, Trump paved over the lawn near the Rose Garden to build a patio space reminiscent of the one at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. He installed a row of presidential portraits along the colonnade between the White House residence and the West Wing.
He erected towering flagpoles on the North and South lawns, renovated the Palm Room and the bathroom that is part of the famous Lincoln Bedroom and ordered restoration work of the North Portico's front columns.
But Trump seems proudest of the $400 million ballroom that he is building after ordering that the East Wing be demolished. "It relaxes me, actually," the president said about the ballroom project during an unrelated event last week.