WASHINGTON (AP) – Paul Chávez had no idea where a sculpture of his father, Latin American civil and labor rights leader Cesar Chávez, would end up at the White House.
He agreed this week to lend the bronze bust to President Joe Biden and struggled to wrap it up and send it from California to the other side of the country. It was an absolute surprise on Wednesday, when he saw Biden at his desk in the Oval Office, with the bust of the late César Chávez just behind the president.
“We are still smiling face to face,” Paul Chavez said in an interview on Thursday.
Biden pressed for themes of unity and inclusion and the defense of racial justice during the campaign, and Chavez said Biden seemed to be trying to convey this through a series of rapid decorative changes he made in the most powerful post in the world.
Chávez said that the prominent placement of his father’s image in the White House sends the message that it is a “new day” after Donald Trump’s inauguration and the anti-immigrant policies that he and his advisers have promoted. Chavez, who is president and chairman of the foundation’s board of directors, named after his father, predicted that “contributions from workers, immigrants, Latinos … will be taken into account” in the new administration.
Whenever Biden is seen at his desk, Chavez, an advocate for agricultural workers, will be there too.
Biden revealed his retouch at the Oval Office on Wednesday, while signing a series of executive orders and other actions in his early hours as the country’s 46th president.
The most visually striking change is Biden’s choice of a deep blue rug, with the presidential seal in the middle, which was last used by President Bill Clinton, to replace a light-colored rug extended by Trump. Biden is also wearing Clinton’s golden curtains.
Busts of civil rights activists Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks are also on display, along with a sculpture of President Harry Truman. Biden removed a bust of Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minister.
On the wall in front of Biden’s desk is a collage of portraits of predecessors George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with Alexander Hamilton, a founder and former secretary of the treasury.
A portrait of President Andrew Jackson, a Trump favorite who signed the Indian Removal Act that expelled tens of thousands of Native Americans from his homeland is no longer on display.
Biden is maintaining the Resolute table, so named because it was built with oak from the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute. But he got rid of the red button Trump had on the table and pressed for a butler to bring a Diet Coke, his favorite drink.
All presidents adjust the decoration of the Oval Office at the beginning of their term to reflect their personal tastes or to telegraph broader messages to the public.
Casa Branca maintains a vast collection of furniture, paintings and other artifacts to choose from. Presidents can also borrow items from the Smithsonian and other museums. The White House curator oversees everything, and the renovation takes place in the hours after the outgoing president leaves the mansion and before the new president arrives.
Biden also replaced a line of military service flags that Trump used to decorate the office with a single American flag and a flag bearing the presidential seal, both positioned behind his desk.
He also chose a tufted dark brown leather chair instead of keeping the reddish brown table chair that Trump used.