If you haven’t made reservations to see the Amy Sherald exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), you may want to consider traveling to its next stop.
According to the museum’s website, “Tickets for Amy Sherald: American Sublime are now sold out.”
Since it opened on Nov. 2 in the museum’s Contemporary Wing, the exhibit has been presented as a ticketed event that requires reservations. It’s on view in Baltimore through April 5.
Last month, officials disclosed that American Sublime set an attendance record for the museum, with 52,597 people having seen it or purchased tickets as of Jan. 20. Before the current exhibit opened, officials said, the BMA exhibit that drew the highest attendance since 2000 was the Matisse/Diebenkorn show, which had about 45,700 visitors in 2016 and 2017.
Baltimore was the third stop for American Sublime, a mid-career survey of the work of the nationally-prominent artist and Maryland Institute College of Art 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 New York in the spring of 2025. BMA ticket prices are $18 for adults, $16 for seniors and $10 for students with ID. Admission is free for BMA members, children 17 and under and on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., but reservations are still required.
Museum representatives have been warning for weeks on social media that people who want to see the exhibit needed to make reservations as soon as possible because tickets were going fast. According to BMA Senior Director of Communications Anne Brown, the exhibit was sold out in November and December. The only month it didn’t sell out, she said last week, was January.
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 in attendance towards the end of their runs, as people rush to get tickets before the shows close. Given the high demand, she said in January, officials are projecting that attendance may top 70,000.
Another impressive aspect of the attendance record is that it wasn’t originally scheduled to go on display in Baltimore and came together quickly. 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.
The record is “a remarkable feat considering that the BMA was not an original destination on American Sublime’s itinerary,” Rhea Nayyar of Hyperalleric.com wrote this month, after attendance reached the 63,000 mark.
The BMA website notes that it’s possible for groups of seven or more to make reservations for guided and self-guided tours. But anyone who visits the museum’s Tours and Group Visits page and attempts to purchase tickets for self-guided adult groups gets directed back to the message: “Tickets for Amy Sherald: American Sublime are now sold out.” Adult groups seeking guided tours of the Amy Sherald exhibit are directed to fill out an Adult Tour Request Form and informed that the maximum group size for a tour of the Amy Sherald exhibit is 30 people.
“Please note that tour slots are limited, and we do our best to accommodate all requests,” the BMA website states. “It may take up to two weeks before you hear back from us regarding your tour request.”
After closing in Baltimore, Amy Sherald: American Sublime will move on to its fourth and final stop, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where it will be on view from May 15 to Sept. 27. General admission tickets there are free for museum members and $23.50 for “Not-Yet-Members.”
