A Black woman wearing a black top and denim jeans poses at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A piece of artwork can be seen in the background.
Artist Amy Sherald poses for a portrait at the Baltimore Museum of Art on October 10, 2025. Photograph by SHAN Wallace Credit: SHAN Wallace

Standing before Amy Sherald’s work, you must learn to stretch; many of her canvases require the reorientation of your perspective, inspire you to become more flexible about your vantage, crane your neck upward in reverence to the quiet opulence of lives well lived. 

To see her defiantly whole and beaming portraits is like the first time you experience a sky free from light pollution. Humbled, you realize the absurdity of doubt. 

It’s not just the immensity of the work that’s encouraging; it’s the way her portraiture expands our collective assessments about identity, so that the read becomes too broad, too complex, to be pigeonholed. Amy Sherald’s opus is so impressively generative, odd, and satisfying in its epic reflection of real people living real lives that it advances a triumphant acknowledgement. These renderings are more heroic than some will ever be willing to appraise. 

It’s the way Sherald has always loved us that makes each work more moving than the last. Stunning and sacred, no two paintings are the same, except that they all determine true grandeur to be an amplification of everyday healing. It’s her definite care and attention to the particular that elevates each likeness above spectacle, and rallies us to bear witness to the wonder of each other. Every sitter is a giant and every painting is a glorious mirror. In her depictions, we effortlessly fly. We are whole and beloved universes with auras so large, so brilliant, they tinge the entire canvas with spectral pastels. Sherald’s soft restorative vision is immortalizing.  

A figure in a black top, blue jeans, and black boots walks past three paintings.
A full circle: “I used to be a waitress here at Gertrude’s, and at that time, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I was gonna keep pushing forward until something did. It feels really good. The way that I look at life is that everything works out the way that it’s supposed to. So with the government being shut down, I’m like ‘Well, of course, you know, this is working out perfectly.’ So it feels really good to be back here, it feels really good to bring it to Baltimore because Baltimore is still very close to my heart.” Photo credit: SHAN Wallace.

Sherald paints portraits that are more than paintings; they are iconic ruminations that read you while you think you’re reading them. Radiant portrayals that remind us all to walk in our light; never compromise; stretch until you stand as tall as her prodigious portraits. May that kind of earnest and unwavering truth always unlock new awareness. You must grow to be comfortable in your unabashed beaming. Be proliferative, joyous, and unbreakable. May all who see Sherald’s unflinching and revolutionary vision observe themselves and be affirmed.

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop smiling while viewing “American Sublime.” Staring across the expanse of the contemporary wing of the Baltimore Museum of Art, you could feel a polyrhythmic broadening of our collective consciousness and chests — Sherald’s colossal offering is truly a heart-opening experience. The exhibition is a blessing to witness, like the feeling you get while walking through a spring garden in full bloom, or from standing in the sun with a boundless ocean as your horizon. 

Artist Amy Sherald, a Black woman wearing a black top, blue jeans, and black boots, studies a painting of a woman wearing a bright yellow sun dress.
On her time at MICA: “It was my introduction to myself, as an artist, like as a real artist, a working artist. It was my introduction to what it was like to have contemporaries, like I had not been in situations where I was working around other artists and having these kind of deep philosophical conversations that we have after coming out of a critical theory class. It was definitely my place of expansion.”

“To have people who I studied in school, who were my art heroes, whose retrospectives I saw when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to make, and who I was gonna be in the art world, to be in the same room as them as a contemporary is always an honor.” Photo credit: SHAN Wallace.

It’s her unwavering love, made visible with jubilant painterly exaltation,that revitalizes weary members to keep pushing until the work is done. Emboldened, we become more deliberate and discerning about our self-conception. Uncompromisable because we know that we are enough as we are. We have always been enough as we are. Epically, ecstatically, and sublimely Black.

“American Sublime” is on view at the BMA from November 2, 2025, through

April 5, 2026. 

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 p.m. to 9 p.m., as well as all day on Thursday, January 15, and Thursday, February 19.

Quotes are as told to Teri Henderson.

A painting of a Black man posing on a bright green John Deere tractor.
Sherald’s advice to young artists: “A lot of times when you don’t know what you’re going to make, it’s not because you have some kind of block, it’s just because you haven’t lived out in the world long enough, and so, part of making good art is having experiences, so maybe get out of the studio and don’t put the pressure on yourself to make something…If you’re out and you’re living in the world with your antennas up and you’re looking at movies and you’re reading and you’re having conversations, that’s part of art-making as well. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum.” Image credit: Amy Sherald. A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt). 2022. Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald.
Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Artist Amy Sherald sits on a black bench wearing a black top, blue jeans, and black boots.
Artist Amy Sherald poses for a portrait at the Baltimore Museum of Art on October 10, 2025. Photo credit: SHAN Wallace.
A painting of a woman with flowing hair posing with a bicycle. The woman wears a tan sun visor and a billowy blue dress. The bicycle is yellow. It has a basket on the front filled with flowers and a fluffy white dog.
Amy Sherald. A Midsummer Afternoon Dream. 2021. Private Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
A painting of a stylish Black woman. She wears a Dalmatian print coat, a bright pink blouse, and bright yellow slacks.
Amy Sherald. As Soft as She Is… 2022. Tate, purchased with funds provided by the Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.