Washington’s loss is Baltimore’s gain.
After cancelling a major exhibition of her work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington due to concerns about censorship, artist Amy Sherald is bringing it to Baltimore instead.
The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) announced on Wednesday that it will present Amy Sherald: American Sublime, from Nov. 2, 2025, to April 5, 2026, in the contemporary wing of the museum at 10 Art Museum Drive. Sherald will also be honored with one of the museum’s “Artist Who Inspires” awards at its 2025 BMA Ball on Nov. 22.
Baltimore will be the third stop for the American Sublime exhibit, a mid-career survey of Sherald’s work. It started at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the fall of 2024 and traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York this spring
The exhibition is also a homecoming for Sherald, a nationally prominent artist who studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art and spent her early years as an artist in Baltimore. She later gained widespread recognition as the artist who painted former First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait. This will be her first major show at the BMA and promises to be a blockbuster for the museum, which has work by her in its collection.
Concerns about censorship
American Sublime was supposed to travel to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, but Sherald decided to cancel the exhibit there on July 24 after concerns about censorship. National Portrait Gallery representatives expressed reservations about showing one painting, Trans Forming Liberty, which depicted the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman, and that reportedly prompted Sherald to reconsider her participation. The painting has since appeared on the cover of The New Yorker.
After learning about the show’s cancellation in Washington, the BMA’s leaders contacted Sherald about bringing it to Baltimore and reached agreement with the artist on Tuesday.
Coincidentally, the museum had already planned to honor Sherald at its Nov. 22 gala along with artist Wangechi Mutu and the Sherman Family Foundation.
The BMA will not censor Sherald’s show the way the National Portrait Gallery would have. The Smithsonian receives the bulk of its funding from the federal government, and the Trump administration has been exercising control over what can and can’t be presented at the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center and other federally-operated venues. The BMA, by contrast, receives no funding from the federal government at present, is not under any Trump administration mandate to censor artists’ work, and has no history of doing so.
‘A cultural force’
“American Sublime is considered the most comprehensive presentation of Sherald’s work to date, illuminating the arc of her career from 2007 to 2024 through approximately 40 paintings,” the BMA stated in its announcement of the show. “From foundational early works to some of her most iconic and recognizable paintings and rarely seen examples, American Sublime captures the power and poignancy of Sherald’s artistry and traces her ascendance as one of the most influential figurative painters of our time.”
The presentation of American Sublime at the BMA “is especially meaningful as Amy Sherald has deep ties to Baltimore and the museum had already planned to honor her with one of its ‘Artist Who Inspires’ awards” in November, the museum noted. “Sherald spent many formative years of her career in the city — both earning her M.F.A. in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and achieving national recognition while living here.”
The BMA began championing Sherald’s work when it acquired her painting Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between in 2018, the year it was made, and has since featured her in several group exhibitions and programs.
“I’ve had the great pleasure and joy of knowing Amy Sherald for a decade,” said Asma Naeem, the BMA’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, in a statement. “In that time, she has become a cultural force, capturing the public imagination through works that are powerful and resonant in their profound humanity.”
Sherald’s story is also deeply intertwined with Baltimore, Naeem said.
“Beyond her education and time lived in our beloved city, Baltimore is rooted in her subjects, on her canvases, and in her titles. Presenting American Sublime at the BMA is a celebration of our creative community and a joyful reunion with those shaped by Amy’s extraordinary power to connect. We’re thrilled to share her transformational work with our visitors.”
“Baltimore has always been part of my DNA as an artist,” Sherald said in a statement. “Every brushstroke carries a little of its history, its energy, its people, and my time there. To bring this exhibition here is to return that love.”
‘Ineffable spark’
Born in Columbus, Georgia, and now based in the New York City area, Amy Sherald is known for documenting contemporary African American experience in the United States through arresting, intimate portraits. She engages with the history of photography and portraiture, inviting viewers to participate in a more complex debate about accepted notions of race and representation, and to situate Black life in American art.
Sherald received her M.F.A. in painting from Maryland Institute College of Art and her B.A. in painting from Clark-Atlanta University. Sherald was the first woman and first African American to ever receive the grand prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
In 2018, Sherald was selected by First Lady Michelle Obama to paint her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. The same year, she was also awarded the Pollock Prize for Creativity by Pollock-Krasner Foundation, as well as the David C. Driskell Prize from the High Museum of Art.
In addition to the BMA, her work is held in public collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the National Portrait Gallery and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
With the exception of her commissioned portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, the BMA noted in its announcement of the exhibit, the artist selects each subject based on her observations of their inherent qualities, such as poise, style, or wit—what she calls their “ineffable spark.”
“During photoshoots, Sherald lets her models pose organically, allowing for the synergy to build between them so that she can authentically capture their essence,” the BMA said. “She then curates each scene and styles the subjects in clothing that speaks to the narrative she wishes to craft, creating a sense of magical realism.
For the titles of 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,” the BMA added. “Through her explorations, Sherald redefines common beliefs about American identity, weaving a broader visual story of history and belonging.”
Highlights of the American Sublime exhibit include Sherald’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition-winning painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance); the portrait of Michelle Obama; the triptych Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons) created for this exhibition; the memorial portrait of Breonna Taylor, and Trans Forming Liberty.
Ticketed exhibition
American Sublime is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curated by Sarah Roberts, SFMOMA’s former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture. At the BMA, it will be a special ticketed exhibition organized by Naeem with Cecilia Wichmann, Curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, Antoinette Roberts, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, and Dylan Kaleikaumaka Hill, Meyerhoff-Becker Curatorial Fellow.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, also entitled Amy Sherald: American Sublime. The artist’s first comprehensive monograph, it represents the broad sweep of Sherald’s painting practice as well as her key influences and inspirations. Contributors include Roberts, the exhibition curator, Elizabeth Alexander, Dario Calmese, and Rhea Combs. It’s published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Yale University Press.
Tickets for Amy Sherald: American Sublime will go on sale Oct. 1 for BMA members and Oct. 8 for the general public. Prices are $18 for adults, $16 for seniors, $14 for groups of 7 or more, and $10 for students with ID.
BMA members, individuals ages 17 and under, and student groups are admitted for free. Free admission is also available on Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m., and on opening day, Sunday, Nov. 2, as well as all day on Thursday, Jan. 15, and Thursday, Feb. 19.
More details about the BMA Ball and After Party will become available later this month.
