Amy Sherald’s ‘American Sublime’ comes home to Atlanta’s High Museum

June 1st, 2026

Amy Sherald, wearing glasses and a striped dress, sits on a circular wooden bench in front of her large-scale painting of a Black man on a green John Deere tractor. — 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.