Amy Sherald

Born in Columbus, Georgia, and now based in the New York City area, Amy Sherald documents contemporary African American experience in the United States through arresting, intimate portraits. She and Kehinde Wiley were selected by former President Barack Obama (Wiley) and former First Lady Michelle Obama (Sherald) to paint their official portraits, becoming the first African Americans ever to receive presidential portrait commissions from the National Portrait Gallery. Throughout her work, Sherald uses gray tones to depict her subjects' skin, employing a painting technique that dates back to the early Renaissance, and encourages viewers to see their interior lives before the color of their skin. Amy Sherald: American Sublime is the artist's first mid-career survey and first major museum exhibition. The presentation, featuring 40-plus works from 2007 to 2024, and organized across six thematic galleries, opens this fall at SFMOMA, then travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art.