Washington’s loss is Baltimore’s gain. “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” a retrospective that the artist pulled in protest from a planned presentation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in the nation’s capital, will instead appear at the Baltimore Museum of Art, just 40 miles to the northeast. The show will open November 2.
“Baltimore has always been part of my DNA as an artist,” said Sherald in a press release. “Every brushstroke carries a little of its history, its energy, its people, and my time there. To bring this exhibition here is to return that love.”
The artist yanked the show from what was to be its final venue over censorship concerns. She said that she learned that her painting Trans Forming Liberty (2024), which reminagines the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman, might not be shown due for fear of offending the Trump Administration. The president has spoken out on numerous occasions about museums being too “woke” and has specifically targeted the Smithsonian for showing works he deems offensive. The White House included Trans Forming Liberty on a list of artworks released under the heading “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian.”
Amy Sherald, Trans Forming Liberty (2024). Image courtesy the artist and Hauser and Wirth. © Amy Sherald. Photo: Kevin Bulluck.
The museum, speaking to the New York Times, which first reported the cancelation, presented a different account of what happened during the planning of the show. The museum told the Times that the painting was never going to be replaced, but rather “contextualized” with a video that, according to Sherald, was to show people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues. The Smithsonian maintains that Sherald misunderstood the museum’s proposal. In any case, the video itself may have been enough of a red flag. “The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was opposed to that being a part of the ‘American Sublime’ narrative,” Sherald told the paper.
Sherald secured her place in art history when she painted an official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama in 2018. She also gained widespread attention for her 2020 portrait of Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police while sleeping in her home in Louisville, Kentucky; the portrait was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History and the Speed Art Museum jointly acquired the Taylor painting. Both the Obama and Taylor portraits are in the retrospective.
Amy Sherald, (2024) on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photo: Sansho Scott / BFA.com
“American Sublime” is the most comprehensive presentation of Sherald’s work to date, exploring her career since 2007 and featuring about 40 paintings. A presentation at the NPG would have been meaningful in several ways: the artist was the first African-American woman to win the museum’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in 2016, before her rise to stardom, and she would have been the first Black contemporary artist with a solo show at the museum. The NPG outing would also have capped the show’s tour, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in January before touching down at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in April.
But the Baltimore presentation will be meaningful in its own way. Sherald earned her MFA in painting from the city’s renowned Maryland Institute College of Art, and was living there when she achieved national recognition. The BMA acquired her painting Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between in 2018, the year it was made, and has included her in several group shows since then. She was already slated to be an honoree at the museum’s 2025 gala in November.
The Baltimore Museum of Art. Photo by Eric Baradat/AFP via Getty Images.
“I’ve had the great pleasure and joy of knowing Amy Sherald for a decade,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s director, in press materials. “In that time, she has become a cultural force, capturing the public imagination through works that are powerful and resonant in their profound humanity. Amy’s story is also deeply intertwined with Baltimore. Beyond her education and time lived in our beloved city, Baltimore is rooted in her subjects, on her canvases, and in her titles.”
“American Sublime” will remain on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, through April 5, 2026.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
