Painter Amy Sherald sits in front of her work ‘A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt).’ (Kelvin Bulluck)
More than 35 paintings. Nearly 20 years of work, “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” is the most comprehensive look yet at one of contemporary art’s most recognized voices. And, it’s now at Atlanta’s High Museum, the final stop on a national tour that began at San Francisco’s SFMOMA in 2024. For Atlanta, the arrival is personal. Sherald, Michelle Obama’s official portrait painter, is a Clark Atlanta University graduate and a recipient of the High’s 2018 David C. Driskell Prize.
Why Atlanta is different
The exhibition was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curated by Sarah Roberts, the museum’s former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture. It traveled first to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, then to the Baltimore Museum of Art. The High was not originally on the itinerary. The exhibition had been slated for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., before those plans fell through. When the High emerged as the final venue, Director Rand Suffolk led the effort to bring it to Atlanta.
The High organized its presentation to walk visitors through the evolution of Sherald’s practice — opening with her early work and moving forward. The exhibition includes a section dedicated to Sherald’s 2018 portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama. The final two sections turn to the themes running through Sherald’s most recent work: interiority and introspection, and the question of what American identity means and who gets to embody it.
One artistic choice runs through every painting. Sherald’s subjects, Black Americans she meets in everyday life, are rendered with skin in shades of gray rather than naturalistic tones. The reason why, said Angelica Arbelaez, the High’s assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, goes to the heart of what Sherald’s work.
“This is a very deliberate choice that Amy made early in her career,” Arbelaez said. “She felt that perhaps using tones of gray to depict skin tone would allow the work to, at least at first, be considered on different terms.”
The figures themselves are posed with stillness and what Arbelaez calls a quiet dignity. That encounter between viewer and subject is also shaped by the installation itself: all of the works are hung lower than standard museum height, so visitors meet each subject’s gaze at eye level rather than looking up.
Amy Sherald, ‘Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons),’ 2024. The triptych was created specifically for ‘American Sublime’ and is the first of its kind in Sherald’s career. (High Museum of Art)
A new work, and what it signals
The exhibition opens not with Sherald’s earliest work but with something she has never made before. “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)” is a triptych — three large-scale panels showing figures emerging from white doorway structures set against an open sky — created specifically for “American Sublime.” It is the first triptych of Sherald’s career, and placing it at the entrance of the show was a deliberate curatorial choice. The High wanted visitors to arrive first at where Sherald is now before traveling back through 20 years of work.
For Arbelaez, who has been in her role at the High for just over a year, organizing the Atlanta presentation has been a singular professional experience. Sherald, she said, is an artist who believes that images have the power to change the world — and who has built a body of work over two decades trying to demonstrate it.
How to see it — including for free
Tickets to “American Sublime” are timed, exhibition-specific, and required for all visitors ages 6 and older. Following sold-out runs in Baltimore and overwhelming demand at the Whitney, the High is encouraging visitors to reserve tickets as early as possible. General admission is $28.50 per person for non-members.
The High has built in several free access opportunities. Admission is free on UPS Second Sundays and Access for All Days, though a separate timed ticket is still required. Tickets for free-admission days can be reserved online on the program-specific pages one month before each program date. The exhibition is also open after regular museum hours every Friday night through Sept. 25, with VIP tickets available for High Frequency Friday and Friday Jazz nights.
