Installation view of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” Whitney Museum of American Art (April 9-Aug. 10, 2025). Shown from left, “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)” (2024) and “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024). | Photo by Tiffany Sage/BFA.com. © BFA 2025
ANOTHER VENUE HAS BEEN ADDED to the touring schedule of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime.” The largest-ever exhibition of Amy Sherald will be presented at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., next spring. The announcement was made over the weekend. The High Museum said its director Rand Suffolk shared the news at its David Driskell Prize gala honoring Los Angeles artist Alison Saar on Sept. 20. The annual prize recognizes “field-defining contributions to African American art.” Sherald received the prize in 2018.
“Our audience already has a deep familiarity with Amy given that she’s a Georgia native, a Clark Atlanta University graduate, and a Driskell Prize recipient. Her work was front and center when we hosted The Obama Portraits Tour as well as this past year’s presentation of Giants,” Suffolk said in a statement provided to Culture Type. “What’s exciting now is that American Sublime will be the first opportunity for our audience to engage with the full measure of her practice. We’re really proud to share that with Atlanta while celebrating an artist whose work so strongly resonates with our community.”
The announcement of the High Museum presentation comes after the Baltimore Museum of Art said it would host the show. The decision came in the wake Sherald withdrawing “American Sublime” at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. In July, the artist said she was cancelling the Washington, D.C., show due to censorship and the institution’s caution regarding the presentation of “Trans Forming Liberty” (2024), her portrait of a Black trans woman posed in the fashion of the Statue of Liberty.
“I have made the decision to withdraw my exhibition American Sublime from the Smithsonian‘s National Portrait Gallery,” Sherald said in a statement at the time. “As a painter, I believe in portraiture’s power to witness, to dignify, and to insist on presence, especially for those too often rendered invisible. We live in a society with a selective memory, one that frequently overlooks lives at its margins.”
The Smithsonian issued in response to Sherald’s decision not to go forward with the show: “The Smithsonian strives to foster a greater and shared understanding. By presenting and contextualizing art, the Smithsonian aims to inspire, challenge and impact audiences in meaningful and thoughtful ways. Unfortunately, we could not come to an agreement with the artist. We remain appreciative and inspired by Ms. Sherald, her artwork and commitment to portraiture.”
“What’s exciting now is that American Sublime will be the first opportunity for our audience to engage with the full measure of her practice. We’re really proud to share that with Atlanta while celebrating an artist whose work so strongly resonates with our community.”
— High Museum of Art Director Rand Suffolk
AMY SHERALD, “Trans Forming Liberty,” 2024 (oil on linen, 123 × 76 1/2 × 2 1/2 inches / 312.4 × 194.3 × 6.35 cm). | Courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Kevin Bulluck
Concerns over “Transforming Liberty” have resulted in the painting and the exhibition as a whole being presented to additional audiences. Originally, the exhibition schedule included three stops. Now the show will tour at least four museums across the country. The exhibition opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art last fall, traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, where it was on view recently, through Aug. 10. The tour was expected to conclude at the Smithsonian in Washington (Sept. 19, 2025-Feb. 22, 2026).
Following the cancellation, two museums have stepped up and announced they are taking the exhibition. Earlier this month, the Baltimore Museum of Art announced the addition of “American Sublime” to its fall schedule. To accommodate the last minute adjustment, the museum is clearing the galleries where its contemporary art collection is ordinarily displayed. The High Museum will present the exhibition from May 15 to Sept. 27, 2026.
A mid-career retrospective, “American Sublime” features about 40 paintings produced between 2007 and 2024, including Sherald’s 2018 portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, which was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery. “For Amy, so much of what she thinks about is the beauty, and the range, and the vastness of the American people, Curator Rujeko Hockley said in a video introduction the Whitney Museum’s presentation of the show. “Amy Sherald thinks of herself as an American realist, as a person who works in the tradition and lineage of American realism. But her significant contribution and difference is her commitment to depicting Black Americans.”
Sherald’s “American Sublime” joins the High Museum’s 2025-26 exhibition schedule, which through next spring also includes surveys of photographers Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Mimi Plumb and major retrospectives of artist, furniture designer, and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988); Dutch fashion artist/designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren (Viktor&Rolf); and Minnie Evans (1892-1987), the celebrated self-taught artist from North Carolina who was one of the first Black artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum of Art (1975). “The Lost World: The Art of Minnie Evans” features more than 100 drawings and will travel to the Whitney Museum next summer. CT
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” will be on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Ga., from May 15-Sept. 27, 2026
FIND MORE Amy Sherald wrote about the role of art in society, the danger of governments controlling museums, and the decision to cancel her “American Sublime” exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Titled “Censorship has taken hold at the Smithsonian. I refused to play along.” the opinion piece was published Aug. 24, 2025, on the website of MSNBC
AMY SHERALD, “A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt),” 2022 (oil on linen, 96 1/8 × 130 1/8 × 2 1/2 inches / 244.1 × 330.2 × 6.35 cm.). | Courtesy the Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde
AMY SHERALD, “Breonna Taylor,” 2020 (oil on linen, 54 × 43 × 2 1/2 inches). | The Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Ky., Museum purchase made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Purchase made possible by a gift from Kate Capshaw. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde
AMY SHERALD, Untitled (Opal), 2019 (oil on linen, 59 x 43 inches / 137.2 x 109.2 inches). | Collection of Robert F. Smith. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
AMY SHERALD, “For love, and for country,” 2022 (oil on linen, 313 x 236.5 x 6.4 cm / 123 1/4 x 93 1/8 x 2 1/2 inches). | San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; © Amy Sherald; Photo: Joseph Hyde, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
AMY SHERALD, “What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American),” 2017 (oil on canvas, 54 x 43 inches / 137.2 x 109.2 cm). | Private Collection, Courtesy Monique Meloche Gallery. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
AMY SHERALD, “If you Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It,” 2019. | Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee, Sascha S. Bauer, Jack Cayre, Nancy Carrington Crown, Nancy Poses, Laura Rapp, and Elizabeth Redleaf. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
AMY SHERALD, “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama,” 2018 (oil on linen, 72 1/8 × 60 1/8 × 2 3/4 inches / 183.1 × 152.7 × 7 cm). | National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. The National Portrait Gallery is grateful to the following lead donors for their support of the Obama portraits: Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg; Judith Kern and Kent Whealy; Tommie L. Pegues and Donald A. Capoccia. Courtesy Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
BOOKSHELF
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” documents the first major survey of the artist. The fully illustrated volume is the first comprehensive monograph of Amy Sherald. Edited by Sarah Roberts, the catalog includes contributions by Elizabeth Alexander, Dario Calmese, Rhea L. Combs, and Deborah Willis. “Amy Sherald: The World We Make” was published on the occasion the artist’s first international exhibition at Hauser & Wirth gallery in London. A detail of her monumental painting “For love, and for country” (2022) graces the cover of the book, which includes a conversation between Sherald and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Amy Sherald” documents her 2018-19 exhibition organized by the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. Sherald was included in a few group exhibitions where her work graced the cover of the accompanying catalogs. Those volumes include Ekow Eshun’s “Reframing the Black Figure: An Introduction to Contemporary Black Figuration” and “Women Painting Women.” In addition, Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor anchored “Promise, Witness, Remembrance” at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., and covers the exhibition catalog. Also consider, “The Obama Portraits” and, for children, “Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment.”
