Art News

SFMOMA Presents World Premiere of Amy Sherald: American Sublime

Sherald’s First Major Survey Exhibition Travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Following Its San Francisco Debut

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present Amy Sherald: American Sublime, global debut of the artist’s first mid-career survey, from November 16, 2024 to March 9, 2025. The largest and most comprehensive presentation of Sherald’s work to date, American Sublimewill bring together nearly 50 paintings made from 2007 to the present—from her poetic early portraits to the incisive, moving figure paintings for which she is best known. Iconic portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor—arguably the most recognizable and impactful paintings made in the U.S. in the last 50 years—will be joined by early works never or rarely seen by the public. Also included will be new works created specifically for the exhibition, such as the artist’s first triptych, Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), on view for the first time. Another highlight of the exhibition will be For Love, and for Country (2022), a landmark painting recently acquired by SFMOMA for its permanent collection.

Organized by SFMOMA and curated by Sarah Roberts, SFMOMA’s former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture, Amy Sherald: American Sublime will premiere in San Francisco before traveling to the Whitney Museum of American Art from April 9 to August 3, 2025, and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, from September 19, 2025 to February 22, 2026.

The exhibition will consider the important impact of Sherald’s work on contemporary art and on American culture, as she addresses the omission of Black figures from the history of figure painting. She has described her paintings as offering a resting place; an opportunity to see Black figures not in contention, not racialized or politicized, but simply being. The resulting body of work is a deeply resonant ode to everyday people and a convincing testament that, as Sherald believes, images can change the world.

“Amy Sherald is one of the most important portraitists working today, and we are honored to present her first mid-career survey at SFMOMA,” said Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director of SFMOMA. “Amy’s vision deeply resonates with the museum’s goals to share and to champion a more expansive art history in our galleries. Her unique and exquisite renderings of her subjects encourage close looking, curiosity and awe. We greatly look forward to sharing this important exhibition with our community.”

“By creating images of Black men, women and children at ease, with few markers of place, time or context beyond the clothes they wear, Sherald has invented an entirely new form of figurative painting. Her approach goes beyond portraiture to enact new conditions for seeing, feeling and understanding shared humanity,” said Roberts. “In the spirit of great American artists like Edward Hopper, Alice Neel and Kerry James Marshall, Sherald’s works reframe our understanding of American culture. Her paintings invite viewers to recognize and move beyond preconceived ideas and engage in more expansive thinking about race, representation and the wide-open possibilities and complexities of every individual.”

American Sublime and its accompanying publication will consider for the first time Sherald’s work within the context of American realist and figurative painting. Gallery texts and catalogue essays will elucidate Sherald’s unique artistic process—inviting individuals she meets or sees on the street to be photographed, then transforming the photos into imaginative figure paintings that act as more than representative portraits. The exhibition will also illuminate how she selects garments and positions her subjects to further the objective of each work as well as her choice to render faces and skin in shades of gray—the centuries-old painting technique that dates to the early Renaissance—to highlight race as a construct. The exhibition is also the first to explore Sherald’s references to historical precedents in visual culture, ranging from the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich to iconic American photographs, to the films of Tim Burton.

To top