Artist Amy Sherald at the 2026 Met Gala in New York. The 2026 Met Gala theme is "Costume Art" with a dress code of "Fashion is Art." Sherald's dress and hat are referencing her painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) 2014, courtesy @shelovesblackart
© Amy Sherald.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia,1973), Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),2014,
oil on canvas, private collection. © AmySherald. Photo by Jon Etter, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Amy Sherald, American Sublime: Portraits That Gaze Back
by Carol Senf
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Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024, oil on linen, Jennifer Gilbert Collection. © Amy Sherald.
Photo by Kelvin Bulluck, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Visitors to the recent Amy Sherald exhibition at the High Museum of Art probably knew Sherald’s work because of her portrait of Michelle Obama, which toured major cities in the US in the spring of 2022 along with the portrait of former President Obama by Kehinde Wiley. The Michelle Obama portrait is included in the current exhibition along with 38 other portraits. While the paintings themselves are unforgettable, Sherald’s own words during a conversation with several members of the High Museum staff revealed the extent to which these distinctive portraits of African American individuals are the products of her activism and desire to push back at powerful political forces as much as they are the products of her artistic sensibility.
American Sublime (on exhibit at the High Museum from May 17 to September 27, 2026) is a kind of homecoming for the Georgia native who grew up in Columbus, Georga; graduated from Clark Atlanta University; and received the 2018 Driskell Prize (a High Museum Prize that honors an artist or art historian who has made significant contributions to the arts of the African diaspora). American Sublime, which is the largest exhibition of Sherald’s work to date, has been on tour throughout the US from San Francisco to New York and Baltimore and consists of 39 paintings (on linen, not canvas) that Sherald created between 2007 and 2024.
Sherald has been engaged with art all her life, spending her elementary school recess periods in the classroom making drawings instead of playing on the playground. She noted during the conversation with High staff members that her portraits were inspired by the photographs she saw on the walls of the family room in her parents’ home. Her father, a dentist in Columbus, expected her to go into medicine when he sent her off to Atlanta for college, but Sherald quickly discovered that her life-long attraction to creating art was simply too strong, so she switched from pre-med to study art.
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Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022, oil on linen, Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald.
Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
The larger-than-life-size portraits in American Sublime explore American life through images that draw on American history and identity, though Sherald often provides her own unique (and sometimes ironic or deliberately confrontational) spin on familiar items like the American flag, a John Deere tractor, a cowboy, or the Statue of Liberty, items that are so familiar that they have become clichéd.. Indeed, her reclamation of these familiar images by women, black, and queer people is a radical act directed at an America that threatens to erase black individuals from American history and art.
Sherald’s portraits are all the more striking because most museum goers will be unaccustomed to seeing so many African American portraits. In fact, Sherald is acutely aware that she is breaking new ground with her focus on African American subjects. She is not the first artist to paint African American subjects, but African American subjects in 18th and 19th century American paintings are generally on the periphery of the artwork rather than the subject. African American subjects in painting were often used to depict something exotic while Sherald focuses on ordinary life. Indeed, Sherald observes that her decision to focus on African American subjects stems from the fact that she rarely saw people who looked like her in art. No surprise. Exhibitions of African American art did not exist until the twentieth century with one notable example being the 1929 Smithsonian Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture by American Negro Artists.
The absence of African American faces in art stems from the fact that art has traditionally focused on the rich, the powerful, and the mature. As a result, portraiture tends to feature subjects who are white and male, except when the white female is depicted as a valuable commodity, usually as the wife of a powerful man. Thus, Sherald is not just painting portraits of interesting people. She is making a political statement.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia,1973), A Midsummer Afternoon Dream, 2021, oil on canvas, private collection.
© Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Another characteristic of the portraits in the exhibition is the confidence that Sherald gives her ordinary subjects. Neither royalty nor otherwise powerful political or religious figures, the individuals in her portraits look directly at the viewer and command respect. In fact, only a few of the portraits are identified by profession, such as the farmer in “A God Blessed Land” (2022) or the cowboy in “What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence” (2017). However, Sherald focuses on their individual power rather than the occupation. These individuals deserve the respect of the viewer simply because they are human beings, not because they are members of a particular profession.
The majority of the portraits are revealed primarily by their absolute sense of self-assurance and occasionally by the cryptic titles Sherald gives them. Women viewers in particular will appreciate the power that Sherald gives her women subjects who look directly out at the world and suggest that they will not take “No” for an answer.
It’s not surprising that Sherald, who was influenced as a child by the photographs on the walls of the family room in her parents’ home, would continue to work from photographs. However, the fact that her subjects come across as full-fledged human beings comes from the fact that she consciously chooses individuals who look interesting, then invites them to her studio to serve as models. The result is that she gets to know her subjects as people prior to taking the photographs from which she paints.
Working from photographs rather than from live models may have also influenced Sherald’s signature style of painting the skin tones of her African American subjects in shades of gray (a technique known as grisaille or grayscale) rather than painting them in more naturalistic tones. The technique also echoes the monochrome family photographs that inspired her in her childhood.
Amy Sherald, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018, oil on linen, 72.1 x 60.1 inches National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia; Clarence, DeLoise, and Brenda Gaines; Jonathan and Nancy Lee Kemper; The Stoneridge Fund of Amy and Marc Meadows; Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker; Catherine and Michael Podell; Mark and Cindy Aron; Lyndon J. Barrois and Janine Sherman Barrois; The Honorable John and Louise Bryson; Paul and Rose Carter; Bob and Jane Clark; Lisa R. Davis; Shirley Ross Davis and Family; Alan and Lois Fern; Conrad and Constance Hipkins; Sharon and John Hoffman; Audrey M. Irmas; John Legend and Chrissy Teigen; Eileen Harris Norton; Helen Hilton Raiser; Philip and Elizabeth Ryan; Roselyne Chroman Swig; Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman; Eileen Baird; Dennis and Joyce Black Family Charitable Foundation; Shelley Brazier; Aryn Drake-Lee; Andy and Teri Goodman; Randi Charno Levine and Jeffrey E. Levine; Fred M. Levin and Nancy Livingston, The Shenson Foundation; Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Arthur Lewis and Hau Nguyen; Sara and John Schram; Alyssa Taubman and Robert Rothman
Former President Obama and his wife quite deliberately chose African American artists to paint their official portraits, and Sherald’s portrait of the former First Lady emphasizes both her public role and her African American heritage. While Michelle Obama is a public figure rather than an individual chosen to depict the strength and personality of an ordinary human being, the Obama portrait shares many characteristics with the other portraits in the exhibition. Like most of Sherald’s paintings, the Obama portrait is captivating because the former first lady gazes directly at the viewer. In addition, the dress chosen for the portrait evokes both her sense of modern style and the traditional quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama.
What is especially striking about the Obama portrait, however, is its sense of calm and absolute power, something both appropriate for the time in which it was painted and for the long view of history. Imagining a lasting perspective, Sherald confidently painted an image that would stand the test of time rather than depicting a particular historical moment.
At least two works were painted to record a moment of history. The first is the portrait of Breonna Taylor, which was commissioned by Vanity Fair for the 2020 issue to honor the young African American woman who was murdered on March 2020 when three police officers illegally entered her home and shot her. The second, TransForming Liberty, appeared as the cover of the August 11, 2025 issue of the New Yorker and depicts the trans model and performance artist Arewa Basil.
Although Sherald generally makes a point of getting to know the subjects of her portraits before starting her paintings, she obviously could not do so in the case of Breonna Taylor. Instead, she relied on photographs provided by Taylor’s mother and other family members and friends to create an image of Taylor’s face. For her body, Sherald adapted the body of another woman, whose face and body appear in the painting titled She Always Believed the Good about Those She Loved. The portrait of Taylor uses the familiar grayscale for which Sherald has become known, but Taylor’s gaze is less direct and confrontational than that of most of Sherald’s other subjects, and the flowing blue dress is also different from the vibrant colors of other portraits. It’s a respectful image of a young woman whose life was cut short, and viewers may wonder whether Sherald’s decision to make Taylor less confrontational stemmed from the fact that Taylor did nothing to provoke the attack that ended her life.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), Breonna Taylor, 2020, oil on linen,
The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky, purchase made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, DC, purchase made possible by a gift from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg / The Hearthland Foundation. © Amy Sherald.
Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia,1973), For Love, and for Country, 2022,
oil on linen, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, purchase, by exchange, through a gift of Helen and Charles Schwab. © Amy Sherald, Photo by Don Ross.
The portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor depict historical figures whose faces viewers might recognize, but TransForming Liberty (2024), one of Sherald’s most recent paintings in the exhibition, is unlike the other two in that it depicts a moment in history rather than a historical figure. It is one of the most provocative images in the exhibit in that it directly addresses the attempt to erase the existence of queer/trans people from American history. Working with a trans model, Arewa Basil, Sherald depicts the Statue of Liberty as a trans woman holding a bouquet of yellow flowers instead of a flame. Unlike the demure gaze of Breonna Taylor, Basil looks directly at the viewer, refusing to be ignored or erased, and the bright fuchsia hair and electric blue gown also command the viewer’s attention. The artwork was scheduled to appear at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. However, when the Smithsonian debated on removing the controversial painting, Sherald cancelled her American Sublime show (scheduled for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery from September 19, 2024 to February 22, 2025) in protest.
While Sherald’s technique and decision to focus on ordinary African American subjects as forces of power is specific to her desire to create a future that empowers individuals who were not depicted in art prior to the twentieth century, it occasionally reveals the extent to which she has been influenced by art, literature, history, and politics. The title of the exhibit evokes poet and scholar Elizabeth Alexander’s 2005 poetry collection of the same title, and Sherald noted during her talk that she was consciously influenced by Tina Post and Lucille Clifton. Viewers walking through the exhibit will likely detect the influence of European paintings. The Bathers (2015) evokes paintings by Cezanne, Renoir, Seurat, and Picasso that used the same title, though none of the European masters depict their subjects as possessing the confidence of the woman on the right in Sherald’s painting, whose hand on her hip exudes self-assurance.
If The Bathers adapts a subject that had previously been associated with white people, For Love, and For Country (2022) takes an iconic photograph from World War II and makes it queer and black. Adapting Alfred Eisenstadt’s photo V-J Day in Times Square (1945), which depicts a white male sailor kissing a white female nurse, Sherald’s painting transforms the heteronormative photo to look at two male sailors kissing.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), The Bathers, 2015, oil on canvas, private collection.© Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Amy Sherald, Trans Forming Liberty, 2024. Oil on linen, 123 × 76 1/2 × 2 1/2 inches
Courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald
Photo by Matthew Millman/Matthew Millman Photography
If Sherald is known primarily for her paintings of African American people, she is moving into an entirely new medium this summer when the National Black Theater in New York City adapts American Sublime as a series of live dramatic performances depicting several of the portraits and including a conversation with Sherald and director Zhailon Livingston.
Sherald describes painting as a slow medium as she encourages viewers to take their time with the portraits: “If you are a looker, I give you little treats to find if you are willing to slow down and look.” Spending time with the portraits in American Sublime will encourage viewers to form relationships with each of Sherald’s portraits who gaze back at viewers and encourage them to see the complexity and the humanity of each subject in the appropriately titled exhibition, American Sublime.
Carol Senf, who recently retired from the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech (US), spent much of her career exploring nineteenth-century women writers, including the Brontes, George Eliot, and New Woman writers. She has also written on Dracula and its creator, Bram Stoker: Dracula: Between Tradition and Modernism, The Paradigm of Dracula: 100 Years of Evolution, Dracula, Blood, and the New Woman, Blue Books, Baedekers, Cookbooks, and the Monsters in the Mirror: Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Carol Senf