After canceling her exhibit American Sublime last year at the Smithsonian over censorship attacks by the Trump administration regarding her portrait of a trans woman, Amy Sherald’s exhibit is set to premiere at the High Museum of Art on Friday.
Best known for her portraits depicting Black American life, Sherald’s paintings, created between 2007 and 2024, include her notable portraits of former first lady Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor. Her work often portrays her subjects with her trademark gray skin and colorful backgrounds in everyday settings.
The exhibit, which is meant to challenge the ideas of what it means to be an American, will feature different thematic galleries centered around identity, race, and more.
While the exhibit was scheduled to make its debut at the National Portrait Gallery in the fall of 2025, Sherald canceled the showcase in July last year after hearing “internal concerns” from the museum’s leadership over her painting “Trans Forming Liberty,” which depicts a Black trans woman as the Statue of Liberty.
At the time, Sherald told the media that a video was proposed by museum leadership to replace the portrait which would feature people’s reactions to the painting and discussing trans issues. While Smithsonian officials wanted the video to provide extra context to the work, the White House attacked Sherald and her art.
A White House official told The New York Times that the “removal of this exhibit is a principled and necessary step” toward restoring what it sees as the proper role of institutions like the Smithsonian.
Sherald told Capital B Atlanta that she’s not backing down from what she believes is right and how she wants to make art.
“I don’t compromise my work or my values or my integrity in any way, shape, or form, that’s just not who I am,” Sherald said. “I did my best to try to stay true to certain standards in my work, and it didn’t represent the narrative that I was trying to represent.”
After being featured in San Francisco, New York, and Baltimore, the High’s showcase of American Sublime from May 15 to Sept. 27 will be its final exhibition. Sherald’s work is also featured in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and more.
In a conversation with Capital B Atlanta, Sherald talked about growing into her identity as a Black woman and an artist, her experience at the AUC, and the advice she has for the next generation of Black artists. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Capital B Atlanta: You were born and raised in Columbus. How would you say your Georgia roots have inspired this exhibit and the work you create as an artist?
Amy Sherald: I don’t think I’d be making this work unless I was born in Georgia. It’s deeply autobiographical. But then also, being born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1973, which is, you know, growing up with the residual effects of racism still very salient in the community. It was going back home to Columbus, Georgia, to caregive for my aunt and my great aunt that the work was kind of born from me, having to reintegrate myself back into the place that I grew up.
I don’t think I would have been asking myself the questions that I was asking myself about race and identity had I not had to go back to Columbus and be my 30-year-old self there and remember what my 15-year-old self was like, or my 6-year-old self was like, and how those environments kind of impacted my identity growing up. The beginning of the body of work is kind of born from that exploration.
When it comes to identity, you’ve been a prominent ally to the LGBTQ community. Why do you think showcasing LGBTQ life in American Sublime is important?
I have friends that are in the LGBTQ community, so it’s important for me that they feel seen and that they know that their bodies are worthy of archiving within this art canon. I feel a responsibility to them. I think it’s important to represent the kaleidoscope of who we are.
How do you feel going to an HBCU molded you as a person and an artist?
As a person, I think it allowed me to be myself. As a young person, I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to 12th grade with pretty much the same people. I didn’t really have any Black friends while I was in high school. I needed to ground myself in my history, my culture, and just be me and not be Black Amy, but just be Amy. So it was a breath of fresh air.
I had the best experience. My dad went to Morehouse, and so I felt like I was also kind of participating in his legacy, and that legacy of attending an HBCU [Clark Atlanta University]. I think getting out of Columbus allowed me to be myself. And to my mother’s dismay I came home with a shaved head, piercings, and tattoos, but I had to. I had to leave the kind of sheltered and restricted background that I grew up in and just kind of be in the world.
I didn’t know what it meant to be an artist then, but I discovered that was the beginning of me discovering what it meant to be an artist. And that evolved over the years through graduate school and after, so it became less about looking different, or expressing myself externally, but then understanding that art is born on the inside of the mind and the body and the spirit.
Your friend and peer Calida Rawles, who you met while at the AUC, has an exhibit right now at Spelman College. How does it feel for both of you to have exhibitions at the same time in Atlanta?
It feels great. That’s my bestie. In art class, she was the one I was always looking at. She’s such an amazing painter, an amazing person, and it feels like a wonderful full-circle moment. She’s my sister, my art sister, my best friend, my biggest supporter, and one of the people that was always encouraging me when I felt like I just wanted to quit. Because, you know, I was 35 years old, and I was 40 years old, and I was 42 years old, I’m like, is this ever going to happen? But her encouragement has been a pillar in my life and in my practice.
While you were at Clark, you changed your major from pre-med to painting. How did you come to that decision?
It was a random interaction with a man that sold art on campus. I ran and got a piece that I had done, and showed him the piece, and he just said something to me that it just registered. He just was like, “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it,” and then I just changed my major. I did it without telling my parents because I have parents that were born in the 1930s, so it’s like you’re either a doctor, a lawyer, or a teacher. I didn’t know what it meant for me to say that I wanted to be an artist. [My parents] didn’t know what it meant either, and that was very scary for them. They just wanted me to be in a career that would allow them to sleep at night. But I had to follow my heart, so I changed my major.
What advice do you have for Black students who are considering pursuing an art career?
I think that it’s important to understand how to listen and tap into your intuition day to day when it comes to how you’re moving through life and towards the work that you’re making. It came down to being comfortable with risk because it’s not empirical. You can work hard and never make it, but you still have to. I had a lot of friends who ended up getting jobs so that they could pay back their school loans, and everybody has to do what makes them comfortable. But you have to be a risk taker and then understand that your path is your path, and that things may be happening for other people and they’re not happening for you. Believe in the timing of the universe and every day visualize where you want to see yourself.
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