A FASCINATING PORTRAIT by Amy Sherald graces the cover of the March 24 edition of The New Yorker. The cover is Sherald’s first for the magazine and coincides her first major museum survey and first museum exhibition in New York. “Amy Sherald: Sublime” opens to public on April 9 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The portrait that appears on the cover is titled “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance).” Sherald made the painting in 2014 and entered it in a competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. She placed first and the win changed the trajectory of her career, leading to Sherald having the pivotal opportunity to paint a portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama.
AMY SHERALD, “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” 2014. | The New Yorker, March 24, 2025
Sherald, who first came to prominence nearly a decade ago, paints timeless, poetic, and engaging portraits of ordinary people. She uses gray tones to depict the skin of her subjects in order to emphasize their individuality, rather than any preconceived stereotypes about race, skin color, or Blackness.
New York-based Sherald was born in Columbus, Ga. She was living and working in Baltimore, Md., when she developed the focus of her practice. Spotting her subjects on the street, she selected the brightly colored clothing she portrays them wearing, photographed them, and finally painted their portraits based on the reference photos. Early on, the process often included picturing her subjects with quirky accessories, such as the comically large teacup featured in “Miss Everything.”
In 2017, Sherald entered the charming portrait of a young woman wearing a red hat, navy blue and white polkadot dress, and white gloves holding an oversized teacup in the National Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The painting won first place and Sherald became the first woman and first Black artist awarded the top prize in the national competition. The jury that selected Sherald included artist and photographer Dawoud Bey, curator Helen Molesworth, and critic Jerry Saltz. A $25,000 award and a commission to create a portrait of a living person for the Smithsonian museum’s collection, accompanied the honor.
The timing was particularly fortunate. The recognition landed Sherald among a select group of artists Obama was considering to paint her portrait for the National Portrait Gallery. Obama selected Sherald and she became the first Black artist commissioned to paint an official First Lady portrait for the museum. The portrait was unveiled in 2018 and entered the NPG collection, which includes First Lady portraits dating back to Martha Washington. About six weeks after the Obama portrait was unveiled, Sherald joined Hauser & Wirth, one of largest and most influential galleries in the world.
“American Sublime” debuted last fall at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Traveling next month to the Whitney Museum, the exhibition presents about 50 paintings dating from 2007 to the present. The selections include Sherald’s most iconic paintings: Her portrait of Mrs. Obama; a posthumous tribute to Breonna Taylor; and “For love, and for country” (2022), which reimagines Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous 1945 photograph of a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on “V-J Day,” marking the end of World War II. Sherald’s contemporary version of the image replaces the white heterosexual couple with two Black men.
Early, rarely seen paintings are featured in the show along with new portraits Sherald created specifically for the traveling exhibition, which are shown publicly for the first time. These 2024 portraits are her boldest yet, including “American Grit,” depicting a double-amputee boxer and a portrait of a trans woman that is a symbolic reinterpretation of the Statue of Liberty, or “Lady Liberty.”
The works on view also include “Miss Everything.” After the presentation at the Whitney Museum, the exhibition travels to the National Portrait Gallery, where the painting unlocked the potential of Sherald’s vision and she first gained widespread attention.
Amy Sherald on ‘Miss Everything’: “I had been thinking about Alice in Wonderland and thinking about these alternative narratives. That’s where the teacup is coming from—bending temporal space and thinking of yourself outside of how the world sees you.”
AMY SHERALD, “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance),” 2013 (oil on canvas, 54 x 43 x 2.5 inches / 137.16 x 109.22 x 6.35 cm). | Private Collection, © Amy Sherald. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo by Joseph Hyde
After she won the portrait competition, Sherald had a conversation with the National Endowment for the Arts about her practice. The discussion included details about how “Miss Everything” came together, the inspiration included a vintage dress and musings about “Alice in Wonderland.”
“I found a dress at a vintage store here in Baltimore City in a neighborhood called Hampden. I often walk up and down that street looking to see if I can find something. The dress was on the rack. It was orange with crème polka dots and I’m like, ‘This is perfect, but this is the tiniest dress I’ve ever seen in my life.’ I had it for about six months before I ran into Crystal, who I know. When I looked at her, and I’ve looked at her a million times before, but when I looked at her in that moment, I’m like, ‘I think she’s the one that’s for this dress.’ So, I finally was able to pull it off the shelves and she came over and it fit perfectly. It was even a little bit too big because she’s so slender,” Sherald said.
“My friend Jeffery, he had given me a collection of his aunt Harriet’s hats. I had just been holding on to those for years, so I put the hat on her. Everything just kind of came together [for making the portrait]. I had been thinking about Alice in Wonderland and thinking about these alternative narratives. That’s where the teacup is coming from—bending temporal space and thinking of yourself outside of how the world sees you.” CT
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” will be on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, from April 9–August 2025. The exhibition travels next to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. (Sept. 19, 2025-Feb. 22, 2026).
BOOKSHELF
“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” documents the first major survey of the artist. The fully illustrated volume is the first comprehensive monograph of Amy Sherald. “Amy Sherald: The World We Make” was published on the occasion the artist’s first international exhibition at Hauser & Wirth gallery in London. A detail of her monumental painting “For love, and for country” (2022) graces the cover of the book, which includes a conversation between Sherald and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “Amy Sherald” documents her 2018-19 exhibition organized by the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis. Sherald was included in a few group exhibitions where her work graced the cover of the accompanying catalogs. Those volumes include Ekow Eshun’s “Reframing the Black Figure: An Introduction to Contemporary Black Figuration” and “Women Painting Women.” In addition, Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor anchored “Promise, Witness, Remembrance” at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Ky., and covers the exhibition catalog. Also consider, “The Obama Portraits” and, for children, “Parker Looks Up: An Extraordinary Moment.”
