‘Amy Sherald’s more recent works have a winning clarity of composition: a single figure, thrown against a coloured background, and realised in such a way as to make us ask what it costs to present oneself with this degree of polish.’
Eleanor Nairne at the Whitney: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4…— London Review of Books (@lrb.co.uk) July 19, 2025 at 11:20 AM
I really envy the people who will be able to visit the Whitney Museum in NYC for this exhibit. Eleanor Nairne on “Amy Sherald’s Subjects“:
At his final White House Correspondents’ dinner, Barack Obama joked that he had been grizzled by the presidency while Michelle had barely aged a day. ‘She looks so happy to be here … That’s called practice. It’s like learning to do three-minute planks.’ Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama speaks to the effort of looking relaxed in the public eye, not least because, of all Sherald’s paintings currently on display at the Whitney survey of her work (until 10 August), it’s the only one behind glass and the only one with its own room and security guard. Sherald usually gives her works enigmatic titles – Well Prepared and Maladjusted; The Lesson of Falling Leaves – but here we have simply Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, three generations distilled into one persona.
Sherald was commissioned to paint the portrait in 2017, after the end of Obama’s second term. It was an intriguing choice at the time. She was in her early forties, had only recently been able to give up her job as a waitress and was barely known to the art world. Her painting career had been stalled by the need to care for ailing relatives and her own diagnosis of congestive heart failure (it isn’t often you see an organ donor thanked in a catalogue). Michelle’s husband, by contrast, picked for his portrait the artist Kehinde Wiley, who had already been the subject of a retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum and whose work had sold to institutions including the Met.
Sherald’s star had begun to rise after she won the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian in 2016. The prize painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), is displayed in an early room at the Whitney and it gives a sense of why she might have had an edge over more established artists for the presidential commission. It shows a young woman, perhaps only a girl, wearing a polka-dot shift dress, white gloves and a red pillbox hat. She holds an oversized tea cup and saucer, lending a note of whimsy to the painting, but everything else suggests furious restraint. Sherald portrays her sitters with a particular tautness. She also has a feeling for vivid colour. Miss Everything is a vision in vermilion and turquoise. Sherald pays meticulous attention to the seams of her gloves and the pompom on her hat, but the girl’s skin is painted with shades of grey in what has become the artist’s signature technique: rendering Black skin as grisaille in order to make us think again about notions of colour and race. Like most of Sherald’s figures, Miss Everything casts an appraising look at the viewer. The overall effect is one of graphic self-possession.
Sherald almost always paints Black subjects, most of whom are strangers she approaches in the street. Together, they select an outfit from the sitter’s clothes (this is another key aspect of her work: her lively interest in the ways we fashion ourselves). Long before she was commissioned to paint a celebrity, Sherald understood that anyone who feels scrutinised in public is likely to use appearance as a kind of armour. After the clothes comes a photography session, which produces the source material for the painting – an image already shaped by hours of posing for the camera (it isn’t surprising that her portraits often feature on magazine covers)…
On entering the exhibition, the viewer immediately encounters a curved wall on which are hung five of Sherald’s most striking paintings, all the same size and placed unusually low: Sherald says she wants visitors to meet her subjects’ gaze. Every detail bristles with life: the fine halo of soft black fur against the salmon pink background in Mama Has Made the Bread (How Things Are Measured), the woven gold of the straw hat in Mother and Child – details that testify to Sherald’s fluency with her materials.
Alice Neel liked to say that she painted all of a person: ‘What the world has done to them and their retaliation’. The opposite might be said of Sherald: she seems less concerned with the bruised interior than with the exterior shell we create under duress. When Ta-Nehisi Coates edited an issue of Vanity Fair in September 2020, he commissioned Sherald to make a cover painting of Breonna Taylor, who had been killed by police earlier that year. Sherald worked with Taylor’s family to create an idealised portrait, a painting of her subject in the future conditional. This is Taylor the way she might have been and would have liked to have been seen, dressed to impress in shades of Tiffany turquoise with fabulous hair and an engagement ring that may have been on its way…
Suzanne
I was in the Bay Area a couple of years ago, and I took some time away from the family to go to the deYoung by myself. They had an Alice Neel show, as well as the Obama portraits, so I got to see Sherald’s lovely portrait of the Forever FLOTUS in person. Both of those were highlights of the year for me.
Sherald’s use of color was more subtle in person than the work appears on the screen. Neel’s work is wonderfully expressive…. reminded me of Egon Schiele, who is in my personal pantheon of greatest artists ever.
ETA: I’ve been to the deYoung maybe 3-4 times by now? I don’t love the architecture. Not Herzog and deMeuron’s best work, IMO.
Baud
I wish I could appreciate art more.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I appreciate art but I hate museums.
Chetan Murthy
That’s a lovely review. Nairne’s description of Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor reminds me of when I saw Spike Lee’s _Malcolm X_ (when it came out). The reviews all complained that it was hagiography. And even back then, my decidedly un-woke self thought “Was Charlton Heston’s Moses even remotely accurate, even to the BIblical text? Was the Biblical text supposed to be accurate? Was the bio of Washington or Jefferson we were taught in school even remotely accurate? Of course not! They were all -myths-!” To my (decidedly uneducated perspective) Lee was trying to show a mythic portrait of Malcolm X, and he succeeded in that.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
I’d like to think that Yul Brenner’s Pharaoh was historically accurate, because he was awesome.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: And Anne Baxter — “Moses, Moses!”
I really like Sherald’s portraits, but I can’t go to a museum to see ’em.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I like the one featured in the article.
Sure Lurkalot
Thanks for this post AL, I too would love to see this exhibit.
The way Amy Sherald paints fabric reminded me of an exhibit I saw last year in Denver by artist Amoako Boafo.
Here’s a link to that exhibit which if you scroll down, contains pictures of some of the pieces.
denverartmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/amoako-boafo
Sure Lurkalot
@zhena gogolia: I have to ask…why do you hate museums?
dexwood
@Sure Lurkalot: My wife, the retired museum exhibits designer, is curious, too.
Suzanne
Also, if anyone goes to this show, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new Whitney. I was there a couple of years ago. I only went to the previous building, by Breuer, once as a teenager, so I don’t remember it too clearly.
moonbat
In 2019, Sherald completed a six-story tall mural of a young woman, Najee Spencer-Young, on the side of a building off 13th Street in Center City Philadelphia that I absolutely adore. I take everyone who comes to visit me to see it.
RevRick
@Baud: The Great Courses + streaming service has several offerings that allow you to enjoy art up the wazoo from the softness of your sofa.
Torrey
@RevRick:
For the record, the wazoo is generally not considered the ideal location from which to enjoy art.
Baud
@RevRick:
I would need it to alter my brain chemistry.
lowtechcyclist
@Torrey:
Maybe the good Reverend has a particularly sensitive and perceptive wazoo.
UncleEbeneezer
After the convention and the night when both Barrack and Michelle delivered incredible speeches, one of my fave black podcasters was just gushing about Michelle and said that in the black community as much as they all love Barrack, it’s Michelle that they are all really ride-or-die for. Michelle has a suffer-no-fools/I’m-not-the-one air of realness about her that Barrack never could’ve gotten away with as a politician.
I’ve gotten to see Sherald’s art a couple times and it is really wonderful to see in person.
MagdaInBlack
@Torrey: We may have identified the source of Baud’s lack of appreciation, tho.
dc
Telling that only Michelle Obama’s portrait has to be guarded and behind glass.
zhena gogolia
@Sure Lurkalot: I don’t like crowds, and I can’t really concentrate on the art. It feels as if I have a superficial encounter for a few seconds.
I used to love them.
HinTN
@Torrey: What about The Grand Wazoo
Chetan Murthy
@zhena gogolia: I find museums to be …. impersonal and somehow sterile. But I’ve found that if I sit with paintings, it helps a lot. Eventually all the people, guards, etc, all fade away and I’m just left with the painting.
That said, I have no patience for modern art. None at all.
Princess
I’m a big Alice Neel fan. And I’m also kicking myself for missing the Sherald show when I was in NYC in June.
Madeleine
We saw this yesterday!
Mary S.
This show was at SF MOMA and I saw it three times. In addition to the paintings, I loved the video in which Sherald visits her childhood home and talks about her influences and her trajectory (her mom appears for a bit).
lowtechcyclist
@zhena gogolia:
That is often true of special exhibits, but much less so when you’re just viewing the gallery’s regular collection. Which is how my wife and I saw the Michelle Obama portrait earlier this year at the National Portrait Gallery. No crowds to speak of – we could have spent half an hour in that room, and nobody would have noticed.
And even with special exhibits, it can vary considerably. When my wife and I saw the Edward Hopper exhibit at the National Gallery about fifteen years ago, there was a decent crowd, but not so many people that you couldn’t take your time when you wanted to.
mappy!
Thanks for the links AL. Back in the day, bus trips to the city were day trips for the benefit of the student body or perhaps a free ride for a long weekend. These usually revolved around time spent at the The Whitney, MOMA and for me, Rembrandt’s drawings at The Met. Galleries are about tangible, brush strokes, pen lines, being touched…
prostratedragon
I would love to see these works if the chance arises. I’m another that needs a while to appreciate more than the surface of a painting, especially, or sculpture; but then for me most art improves with repetition.
I’ve only been to a museum once since I started using a wheelchair, and it is a different experience. One’s eye level is changed, usually for the worse. Captions can be hard to read for the same reason. Low-power opera glasses might help here. And at the Met, some galleries had such narrow pathways that manuvering through was a tense affair. Nevertheless I would consider a museum outing sometime.
Anne Laurie
@prostratedragon: Since I am currently wheelchair-dependent, I was very pleased to see that the Whitney exhibit not only offers a discount for people with disabilities, that discount also includes ‘complimentary admission for care partner’. I hope other museums pick up on this, too!
Another Scott
@RevRick: @Torrey:
🎶 🎶 Something something Synchronicity…🎶 🎶
“Birds” in French…
[ rofl ]
Best wishes,
Scott.
prostratedragon
@Anne Laurie: Oh, that’s nice! I get about on my own mostly, but many can’t. Bedides, it can be fun to go with a friend🙂
Tenar Arha
@Suzanne:
Unfortunately I just realized this exhibit is happening, & I may not have time to go. However, compared to The Breuer, it’s definitely more spacious. I interned there for a semester in college & it was very cramped even then. Plus, I went there when it was The Met Breuer & and to the new Whitney on a couple trips, and having to arrange my gallery viewing by only using the elevator(s) once & walking downstairs was a PITA.
I fell in love with the new building and location. I can’t speak to the exterior, other than its aluminum-like yet angular profile from the street is clearly meant to be a landmark from a distance, while the glassed in lobby level does seem to be inviting the street inside, especially on cold windy days. I do find the gift shop corner is kinda meh.
They’ve got the standard white boxes with moveable wall partitions. It’s cleverly arranged so that the permanent collection has spaces on separate floors from where they do rotating exhibits. This helps somewhat with gallery traffic flow, though you still have to deal with the multiple elevators getting filled up sometimes. There’s an exterior outdoor balcony space on almost every floor for sculptures (and occasional outdoor complex installations). They are accessed from the galleries, and have a fantastic views over the High Line & the river. NB The balconies are also connected by open work metal stairs, which some will be fine with, but not everyone.
mayim
@Anne Laurie:
Common Ground, the fair run every year by the Maine Organic Farmers and Growers Association, also has free admission for anyone disabled and a caretaker. They view it as recognizing the financial realities of being disabled, according to the person I asked about it, as well as a concrete/practical demonstration of everyone being welcome.
LAC
@lowtechcyclist: That was my experience too. I have enjoyed many great exhibits without feeling overwhelmed by crowds. I loved seeing both portraits in relative peace.
I appreciate this post so much as I watched a great doc on the Schomburg center for research in black culture in Harlem and it’s exhibtion of black artists, including this artist. Thank you AL!
People seriously, you hate crowds,, museums, and modern art, etc etc… 🙄
J.
Saw the exhibit a month ago. Fabulous. One of the best exhibits of contemporary art I’ve seen, if not the best. It included a brief video of Sherald talking about and making her work. If any of you are in NYC this summer, go see it.
O. Felix Culpa
A day late and many dollars short, but thank you for this post, AL. I’ve seen a few of Sherald’s paintings in other settings and wish I could go to this exhibition. I LOVE museums, although my viewing style has changed. In my youth, I rushed around to ALL THE THINGS. Nowadays I view less and see more, if you know what I mean. Not a fan of overcrowded blockbuster shows, but there are ways of navigating even those to see once-in-a-lifetime collections. My absolute favorite was the Mark Rothko retrospective in Paris a few years ago. I was already in Europe, so it was a cheap easy hop to see nearly all of his greatest and lesser hits in one go. Made me very happy.
Nancy
@Chetan Murthy:
Yes. Reviewers have to say something. Your statement is what they could have/should have said.
And why not glorify Malcolm X? When I read his autobiography, I learned that he acknowledged who he had been and documented his work to re-make himself. I had the sense to admire that quality as a high school student.