Atlanta welcomes renowned home painter Amy Sherald, as “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” arrives at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art for the final stop on its national tour. For assistant curator of modern and contemporary art and curator for the exhibit, Angela Arbelaez, bringing the exhibition to Atlanta feels more like a homecoming, as the city played a major role in Sherald's formative years as an artist, long before her work gained international acclaim. Raised in Columbus, Georgia, Sherald later studied at Clark Atlanta University, where she laid the foundation for a career that would lead to her becoming one of the most celebrated painters of her generation and being chosen to paint the now-iconic portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The “American Sublime” exhibition is structured into five sections throughout the museum, tracing Sherald’s artistic evolution from works dating back to 2007 to her more contemporary pieces, which have made her one of the most recognizable painters today. Inspired by black-and-white family photographs, Sherald’s signature style uses the grisaille technique to reimagine Black skin in grayscale, contrasted with vivid backgrounds, colorful clothing, and American imagery. The effect is both nostalgic and contemporary, where the portraits feel like archived memories still unfolding in real time. In her paintings, Sherald’s real-life subjects stand poised beneath white picket fences and open skies, transforming these everyday moments of Black life into images of quiet grandeur. Arbelaez explains that Sherald’s work allows viewers to experience “the ‘sublime’ range, breadth, beauty of Black life in this country.”
According to Arbelaez, Sherald holds a profound understanding of how images shape identity and cultural meaning, and how that meaning can change over time. The relationship between images and time became especially powerful for her as she reflects on a featured painting, “Planes, Rockets, and the Spaces in Between.” During the curatorial process, this painting took on new meaning for Arbelaez following the Artemis II mission, when astronaut Victor Glover became the first Black man to travel to the moon. While the painting may have once felt more aspirational, the two women figures watching the rocket launch now appear newly assured in what once seemed distant.
The exhibition offers a deeper understanding of Sherald’s artistic journey and the intention behind her work, while inviting viewers to consider how images shape our understanding of ourselves and others. Through the stillness in each of her portraits, Sherald holds space for ordinary moments of Black life to exist fully with confidence, tenderness, and ease on the canvas. It is, as Arbelaez describes, “a show that Atlanta will love.”