Last Call To See Amy Sherald’s Exhibit At The Whitney

Featured Image: Trans Forming Liberty painting by Amy Sherald/Photo by Kelvin Bulluck via Whitney Museum of American Art Facebook

Amy Sherald catapulted to national consciousness when her portrait of Michelle Obama was unveiled in 2018 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her 2020 painting of medical worker Breonna Taylor, shot and killed by police in Louisville, KY, took our breath away; it has been described as having captured both the joy and the pain of that moment. More recently, the artist made headlines after canceling an exhibit over concerns about having her work censored.

Amy Sherald: American Sublime, organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, had been slated for The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in September. Reportedly, Vice President JD Vance raised concerns about its “woke and divisive content” at a meeting in June with the Board of Regents. “While no single person is to blame, it’s clear that institutional fear shaped by a broader climate of political hostility toward trans lives played a role,” Sherald told ABC News. “This painting exists to hold space for someone whose humanity has been politicized and disregarded. I cannot in good conscience comply with a culture of censorship, especially when it targets vulnerable communities.”

American Sublime is currently on view at NYC’s Whitney Museum of American Art where it has been meeting the gaze of viewers since April. It’s a timely opportunity to get within inches of her vibrant work, including the piece that set the woke police to sounding sirens. Trans Forming Liberty is described by The Whitney as recasting the Statue of Liberty as a non-binary trans-femme person; and suggesting that the ideal inscribed on the sculpture—“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”—be applied unequivocally to all citizens, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or other identifiers.

Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor portraits by Amy Sherald/via The Whitney FaceBook and SFMOMA Instagram

Another Sherald’s bold reimagining at 10 feet tall, For Love, and for Country is also on display. The painting borrows from the famous photo of a sailor kissing a women in Times Square on the day Japan surrendered in World War II. Two Black men kiss in a sweeping intimate embrace.

For Love, and for Country by Amy Sherald/Photo via SFMOMA FaceBook

Regarded as channeling a bit of Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth in the American Realism tradition, the show includes her iconic work, as well as pieces that reflect the more full picture of American life—celebrating the lives of “everyday” Black Americans. 

The artist is known for using gray tones with pops of color. Born in Columbus, GA, Sherald got to know her grandmother through an old black and white photo. It didn’t take long before she realized people who looked like her family were not to be found in history books or in museum public spaces. By second grade, she knew she wanted to be an artist, and eventually studied painting at Clark-Atlanta University before going on to Maryland Institute College of Art. Weeks before earning her MFA in 2004, the artist had a serious health scare. While training for a triathlon, Sherald was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure. Then in 2012, she blacked out in a store, and her heart was found to be functioning at only 5%. Two months later, she became the fortunate recipient of a heart transplant at age 39.

Sherald has been known to say that her work belongs as much to history as to art. At age 51 and blazing strong, she continues to make both.

Amy Sherald: American Sublime is on view through this week—but there’s still time to catch it before it closes on August 10.