Sophie Cunningham

The House of Medici patronized Michelangelo, Botticelli and da Vinci. The House of Obama patronized Nicola Green: the artist wife of David Lammy, who served as deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom until Monday. From August 2008 to January 2009, Green was offered, according to her website, “unprecedented artistic access to President Obama’s monumental campaign,” the fruit of which was In Seven Days…, a portfolio of seven abstract paintings of the new president, released in 2010. Cockburn’s favorite is “Day Six, Sacrifice/Embrace,” which shows the head and hands of the 44th president, splayed on a sky-blue field.

Dorchester House is a storied Art Deco apartment block in Northwest DC, noted for being John F. Kennedy’s first address in the capital. Fast forward a few decades and the building appears to offer far less glamor: a number of residents have complained about repeatedly finding urine and feces in the building’s stairwells. One resident told Cockburn he encountered excreta in the stairwell “daily during the winter.” The waste is cleaned up “usually within a few hours after I contact the front desk,” says the resident, “but in rare cases it can remain for days. There is still some dried feces in one of the stairwells that has never been cleaned up.” “I have to use the flashlight on my phone to avoid stepping in it,” he added.