The Baltimore Museum of Art has set an attendance record with its current exhibition: Amy Sherald: American Sublime.
As of Jan. 20, 52,597 people have seen the exhibition or purchased tickets since it opened on Nov. 2 for a five-month run that will end on April 5.
Before the exhibit opened, BMA officials said the exhibit that drew the highest attendance there was the Matisse/Diebenkorn show in 2016 and 2017, which had about 45,700 visitors. The show with the second highest attendance was The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, with about 30,000 visitors in 2023.
“The overwhelming success of Amy Sherald: American Sublime is a profound testament to what Sherald’s work means to Baltimore and to audiences across the country,” said Asma Naeem, the museum’s Dorothy Wagner Wallis Director, in a statement this week. “More than 52,000 visitors have already experienced the exhibition — our highest attendance in more than two decades — and what we’re hearing again and again is how deeply people feel seen, moved, and connected in these galleries.
“Amy’s paintings imagine an everyday life centering Blackness and honor the dignity of Black communities, and witnessing such a broad swath of humanity embrace her vision is extraordinary,” Naeem continued. “This moment reflects not only her enduring impact as an artist with roots in this city, but also the power of art to bring people together and feel kinship and joy.”
Anne Brown, the museum’s Senior Director of Communications, said Sherald’s exhibit has also sparked an increase in the number of museum memberships and sales at the gift shop, where a book published to accompany the show has sold out.
One of the most impressive aspects of the exhibit, Brown said, is that it broke the museum’s attendance records early in its run. She said other shows have seen a surge of attendance towards the end of their runs, as people rush to get tickets before the shows close. With the American Sublime exhibit scheduled to remain on view for 10 more weeks, she said, museum officials are now projecting that attendance may top 70,000.
Third stop
The Baltimore Museum of Art is the third stop for American Sublime, a mid-career survey of the work of the nationally-prominent artist and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) graduate. 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 the spring of 2025.
The exhibit was scheduled to open last September at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., but Sherald decided to cancel it in August after concerns about censorship. After news broke about the cancellation, the BMA offered to present it in Baltimore instead, and Sherald accepted. It will be on view at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art from May 15 to Sept. 27.
Museum officials say there are several reasons why Sherald’s show was poised to break attendance records in Baltimore. First, the artist received extensive media coverage for her decision to pull her show from the National Portrait Gallery, including a feature on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Second, Sherald has strong connections to Baltimore from her years attending MICA and living and working in the city afterwards. Third, many of the paintings in the exhibit were made in Baltimore and many of the subjects are from the area. Fourth, the exhibit is considered the most comprehensive presentation of Sherald’s work to date, covering paintings she made between 2007 and 2024, including the official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama. And fifth, Sherald is an artist who is at “the height of her powers,” as Naeem put it, with a large and growing following.
Since 2018, Sherald has been represented by the international mega-gallery, Hauser & Wirth. This month, she signed with the talent agency CAA (Creative Artists Agency) – the latest cross-over between the art world and Hollywood. Other artists represented by CAA include Arthur Jafa and Julien Schnabel.
Naeem, who was instrumental in bringing Sherald’s exhibit to the BMA, had predicted it would break attendance records.
“We’re expecting all records to be smashed, because everyone loves Amy,” she said at a media preview last fall. “Who doesn’t love Amy Sherald? There’s so much to love.”
Statistics about the visitors
Here is some information about the visitors to the show, based on a survey of more than 2,000 people who have seen it in Baltimore:
- 23 percent were first-time visitors.
- 25 percent visited once in the past year.
- 30 percent were under the age of 50.
- 47 percent spent more than two hours in the exhibition.
- 85 percent were from Maryland.
- Others came from around the U.S., including Maine, Florida, Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico, California, and Washington. In all, visitors came from 35 states and the District of Columbia.
- Visitors came from other countries as well, including Israel, Ireland and Spain.
The top 10 words used by visitors to describe the exhibition were: informative; beautiful; welcoming; accessible; diverse; inclusive; interesting; inspirational; educational and engaging.
American Sublime is a ticketed exhibit, with prices of $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and $10 for students with an ID.
The museum is located at 10 Art Museum Drive. BMA members, individuals aged 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 Feb. 19. More details are available at artbma.org.
