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Painter Amy Sherald had a retrospective open this week at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2018, she painted Michelle Obama's portrait, seated in a flowy, white poplin dress, resting her chin on her hand. NPR's Olivia Hampton met Sherald at the Whitney and brings us this report.
OLIVIA HAMPTON, BYLINE: The show is called "American Sublime." For Amy Sherald, who came up with the title, it links back to her family roots in the South.
AMY SHERALD: When I think of "American Sublime," I think about my mother, who was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1935, and what she survived to become and live in the year 2025 - so the beauty and the terror of what it was to be raised in the South.
HAMPTON: Sherald paints Black subjects using shades of gray for their skin tones and in contrast with her otherwise striking color palette. It lets viewers consider the subjects' humanity before their race.
SHERALD: I think subconsciously, I had a fear about my work solely being about identity and race, and I didn't want that. I think that was one of the important things that I thought about. It's like this work has to speak to not only people that look like me, but also sit in the world for all of us to understand.
HAMPTON: Sherald is subverting traditional narratives of who is American. There's a Black couple standing proud in front of their car and yellow house, a transgender Statue of Liberty with bright pink hair, a brawny boxer without legs in a ring. The portraits look out at the viewer. They seem to have a rich interior life. Rujeko Hockley curated the Whitney's iteration of this traveling exhibit after its first stop in San Francisco.
RUJEKO HOCKLEY: It's really about kind of individuality, interiority, how we adorn ourselves, how we move through the world and the kind of idiosyncrasies of everybody in the world.
HAMPTON: Hockley points to a 10-foot canvas where two Black men restage the iconic World War II photo of a white male sailor kissing a white nurse in Times Square. In Sherald's portrait, the men are both sailors, kissing against a blue sky.
HOCKLEY: It's a very kind of quietly subversive but very impactful act to reimagine this image that people really have burned into their minds. This kiss is kind of one of the most iconic and well-known photographs of the 20th century, and just this tweak transforms it entirely.
HAMPTON: Today, Sherald's bright, bold portraits are owned by collectors like CNN's Anderson Cooper or sportscaster Bryant Gumbel. But her journey was a long one.
SHERALD: I was waking up and going to my studio at 8 o'clock in the morning and working until 3 p.m. and leaving my studio and then going to wait tables from 3 to 12. I was broke for a very long time, but I always believed in myself and believed in the work and knew I had something special. And so I always tell young artists, the world is full of quitters, so don't quit and you'll eventually rise to the top. And here I am - ta-da.
HAMPTON: Sherald's breakthrough didn't come until she was 45, when she painted Michelle Obama. That work was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, which is set to host the show in September. But it's part of the Smithsonian Institution, which President Trump has targeted in an executive order for being, quote, "under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology."
SHERALD: We're talking about erasure every day. And so now I feel like every portrait that I make is a counterterrorist attack (laughter) to counter some kind of attack on American history and on Black American history and on Black Americans.
HAMPTON: The show is at the Whitney through August 10.
Olivia Hampton, NPR News, New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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