Amy Sherald paints Black subjects in soft, saturated color and places them dead center, never at the edges. If the name sounds familiar, she is the artist behind Michelle Obama's official portrait from 2018. The High Museum of Art in Midtown opened 'Amy Sherald: American Sublime' on May 15, and The Atlanta Voice calls it the largest exhibition of her work yet, more than 35 paintings spanning 2007 to 2024.
Getting the show here was not a clean handoff. Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the tour was originally set to close at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. That plan unraveled, and Atlanta picked up the final stop instead. The High has a long track record with major touring retrospectives, and being the closing venue means this is the last chance to see the full survey assembled in one place.
If you have not been to the High in a while, this is a good reason to fix that. It is an easy MARTA trip to Arts Center station, and a Sherald survey at this scale is the kind of thing people travel to other cities to catch. This time it is the other way around.
