In the grand contemporary theatre of portraiture, few artists are capable of changing our way of seeing as much as Amy Sherald.
Her art, restrained yet intensely silent, exists on the border between reality and imagination, as if each face became a projection screen for a larger story: that of the representation of Black bodies in Western art. What is most striking about Sherald is this singular way of suspending time: a pause that is never cold, but rather acts as an invitation to contemplate what we thought we knew.
The exhibition "American Sublime," first presented at SFMOMA before moving to the Baltimore Museum of Art, brings together some forty canvases created between 2007 and 2024. It is a journey into a now-iconic body of work, populated by figures who don't pose but assert themselves. Sherald never offers anecdotal narratives. She composes presences. Her palette, always precise, combines the iconic gray chosen for skin—a gray that defies all racial categorization—with vibrant, almost surreal colors that envelop clothing, sets, or accessories. The effect is twofold: on the one hand, these figures seem to emerge from a modern fairy tale; on the other, they look at us with disarming sincerity.
What emerges from this retrospective is a profound coherence. Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)The portrait that won her the prestigious Outwin Booker Portrait Competition in 2016 already demonstrated this desire to subvert the conventions of representation. Later came the portrait of Michelle Obama, which became iconic instantly, not for its official status, but for the tenderness and freedom it conveyed. Sherald doesn't glorify. She reveals. The monumentality lies elsewhere, in the posture, in the inner light.
Among the works that mark the journey, the immense triptych Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons) It depicts an almost sacred scene: a community that seems to float in a symbolic space, both outside the world and anchored in a history made of passed-down memories. The monumental Transforming Liberty Sherald continues this approach, transforming a portrait into a manifesto—a way of saying that dignity and the sovereignty of the body are anything but abstract. As for the portrait of Breonna Taylor, it remains one of the emotional high points of the exhibition: an image of infinite gentleness that transforms pain into homage and anger into clarity. Sherald doesn't depict a tragedy, but an existence.
The exhibition at the BMA pays tribute to this civic dimension of his work. Baltimore is not just a city where Sherald lived: it is an emotional territory, a foundation. The programs organized alongside the exhibition underscore this community aspect. Community Day invited visitors to engage with themes dear to the artist—identity, imagination, the beauty of the everyday—through workshops, music, and performances. Later, a conversation between Sherald and the BMA director, Asma Naeem, situated this unique journey within an intimate geography: that of the city, its influences, and the idea that art can reorient a way of being in the world. Even the festive Art After Hours evening extended this direct connection between creation, shared experience, and the joy of being together.
We leave "American Sublime" with the conviction that portraiture can still do anything: heal, embody, change the way we see. Sherald offers images that endure because they reinstate the Black figure in an art history from which it had been marginalized for far too long. Here, it stands out, serene, sovereign, sublime.
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime”
Baltimore Museum of Art
10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore (USA)
Until April 5, 2026
