Bush and Clinton Portraits Are Back on Prominent Display in White House After Being Relocated Under Trump

The official presidential portraits of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are back on prominent display on the White House walls following their relocation by the Trump administration, PEOPLE confirms.

Under President Donald Trump, the Clinton and Bush portraits were replaced with portraits of former Republican Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley, CNN reported last summer.

The Clinton and Bush portraits were removed in July, according to CNN, despite a tradition of displaying more recent presidents in the most prominent positions in the White House. They were moved to the rarely-used Old Family Dining Room which the network noted put them "well outside of Trump's vantage point in the White House."

Come Inauguration Day, however, the portraits of the 42nd and 43rd presidents were returned to their traditional locations in the Cross Hall, which connects the White House's Grand Foyer with the State Dining Room and the East Room.

The White House Office of the Curator, under President Joe Biden, was responsible for the move of the artwork, a White House source tells PEOPLE.

The area in which the portraits now hang hosts official occasions such as state dinners and ceremonies for foreign dignitaries.

The presidential portrait replacements are only one example of the decor changes being made throughout the White House.

As is standard between presidents, Biden redecorated his Oval Office, with Deputy Director of Oval Office Operations Ashley Williams telling The Washington Post in a tour that the administration wanted the space to "look like America."

"This Oval is an Oval for Day One," Williams told the Post, adding, "It was important for President Biden to walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as president."

Biden's office includes an extensive number of paintings and busts featuring the likenesses of influential past presidents and other figures who have made huge strides throughout American history, including Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Robert F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.

On the walls in the Oval hang portraits of former presidents such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Lincoln, though the Biden administration removed a portrait of Andrew Jackson that hung in the office during Trump's presidency.

Biden's Oval Office also saw the removal of military flags behind the desk and a bust of Winston Churchill, with the addition of an American flag and a flag with a presidential seal.

Biden isn't the only one who has made changes.

Last week, The New York Times reported that upon taking over the West Wing office previously occupied by Trump anti-immigration adviser Stephen Miller, Susan Rice — Biden's director of the White House Domestic Policy Council — hung Haitian artwork and lit some sage.

While a largely symbolic gesture, the cosmetic changes to the White House interiors are part of a larger Biden administration effort to put the Trump era squarely in the past.

On his first day in office, Biden signed a slew of executive orders, many of them aimed at directly rebuking Trump policies. (Conservatives argued the wave of orders as excessive and working outside presidential authority.)

In a message to his incoming staffers upon entering the White House, Biden said his administration would be judged by how well it "restores the integrity and competency in this government" in the wake of the previous administration.

While former President Barack Obama was notably not hosted at the Trump White House for his own portrait unveiling, Biden aides have said they expect Biden will resume the tradition — presumably for both Obama and Trump.

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