The Whitney Museum of American Art will present Amy Sherald: American Sublime, the artist’s debut solo exhibition at a New York museum and the most comprehensive showing of her work. Opening to the public on April 9, 2025, American Sublime considers Amy Sherald’s powerful impact on contemporary art and culture, bringing together almost fifty paintings spanning her career from 2007 to the present. This exhibition positions Sherald within the art historical tradition of American realism and figuration. She privileges Black Americans as her subjects in her paintings, depicting everyday people and foregrounding a population often unseen or underrepresented in art history. The exhibition features early works, never or rarely seen by the public, and new work created specifically for the exhibition, along with iconic portraits of First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor—two of the most recognizable and significant paintings made by an American artist in recent years.
Sherald places her work within American realism and portraiture lineage alongside artists like Robert Henri, Edward Hopper, Alice Neel, and Andrew Wyeth—all represented in the Whitney Museum’s collection. The early American realists sought to capture the ethos of American places and people. However, there is an evident absence of Black Americans in these representations. Deeply committed to expanding notions of American identity, Sherald’s compositions centre her subjects, inviting viewers to meet them eye to eye and empathetically step into their imagined worlds, employing props and iconography—a tractor, a beach ball, the American flag, a toy pony, or a teacup—the artist crafts universally relatable narratives, illuminating her subjects’ idiosyncrasies and their unique life experiences. These portraits offer a complete view of the complexity of twenty-first-century American life by including symbols that resonate with standard ideas of American identity and history. The resulting body of work attests to the multiple facets of American identity, reinforcing Sherald’s profound belief that “images can change the world.”
“It is a great honor to work with Amy Sherald, one of the most compelling, generous, and impactful artists of our time,” said Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator at the Whitney Museum. “Her unwavering dedication and commitment to what she has called the ‘wonder of what it is to be a Black American’ is deeply felt, and I am thrilled to share her visionary work with our audiences.”
“American Sublime is a salve,” said artist Amy Sherald. “A call to remember our shared humanity and an insistence on being seen.”
“Few contemporary artists make images as gripping and indelible as Amy Sherald. Each of her paintings distills the essence of an individual while also conveying a broad sense of humanity,” said Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director. “Over the years that I’ve been in dialogue with Amy, we’ve visited works in the Whitney’s collection by Paul Cadmus, Barkley Henricks, and Edward Hopper, among so many American painters whose legacy she both inherits and extends. I can think of no better home for this important exhibition, which we’re honored to present.”
Amy Sherald: American Sublime is on view from April 9 to August 10, 2025, at the Whitney Museum. Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator, organizes the Whitney presentation of this exhibition with David Lisbon, curatorial assistant. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) organizes the exhibition and curates it with Sarah Roberts, the former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA.
Exhibition Overview – Amy Sherald: American Sublime
American Sublime explores the work of one of the most preeminent artists of our time. Arranged chronologically, the exhibition begins with Amy Sherald’s poetic early portraits and leads into the distinct and striking figure paintings for which she is best known. In her intentional privileging of Black Americans as her subjects, Sherald tells stories of a population underrepresented in traditional portraiture. Influenced by her childhood fascination with family photographs—a black-and-white portrait of her grandmother in particular—Sherald aims to portray Black people in quiet, authentic moments. She chooses subjects who vary in age, gender, and identity, placing them in scenes from everyday life to share perspectives she wants to see depicted in the world.
Sherald identifies as an American realist. She tells stories of the American experience through her paintings, much like artists Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. It wasn’t until she saw a painting with a Black person in it at a museum as a child that she realized she hadn’t yet seen herself represented in art history—a pivotal moment that continues to impact her career. Sherald’s portraits contribute new narratives to the collective American story by recasting figures in archetypal American roles, like a cowboy, a beauty queen, or a farmer. While Sherald acknowledges the political dimension of her work, she wants her impact to reach beyond that. Sherald invites viewers to challenge established preconceptions about race and engage with the universal stories told in her portraits, revealing the richness and complexity of humanity. Her signature gray palette for skin tones deemphasizes the focus on race, expanding her subjects’ narratives and demonstrating that there is more to an individual than can be contained in a single image or facet of their identity.
Photography is an essential element of Sherald’s creative process, serving as her sketchbook and the foundation for her compositions. Except for her two commissioned portraits of First Lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, the artist selects each sitter based on their inherent qualities, such as poise, style, or wit—what she calls their “ineffable spark.” During photoshoots, Sherald allows her models to pose organically, allowing for the synergy to build between them so that she can authentically capture their essence. She curates each scene and styles the subjects in clothing that speaks to the narrative she wishes to craft, creating a sense of magical realism. In titling her paintings, Sherald often draws inspiration from Black women writers and poets like Toni Morrison and Lucille Clifton, reinterpreting their poetry to develop different contexts around the interior worlds of her subjects. Sherald redefines common beliefs about American identity through her explorations, weaving a broader visual story of history and belonging. Ultimately, she portrays everyday Black people as individuals, not in contention or inherently politicized, but simply existing.
In addition to the paintings in the galleries, Sherald will present work on the facade of the Horatio Street building across from the Museum. The newly commissioned work, Four Ways of Being, brings together four portraits by the artist—some never before seen in New York—and explores the intersection of past, present, and future, each capturing a distinct way of existing in the world. Four Ways of Being will be on view beginning the week of March 25, 2025.
