Latest news with #AmySherald
CBS News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Summer 2025 preview: On display at museums
It's hard to resist staring back at paintings by artist Amy Sherald, now on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Sherald is best known for her portrait of former first lady Michelle Obama, but the exhibit gives a more complete look at her palette. "That painting is here in the show, and we're very happy to be able to share it with visitors here," said co-curator Rujeko Hockley. "But we really wanted to show the progression of her work as an artist. "Amy often paints the skin tone of her subjects, who are Black people, in what we call grisaille, or gray tone," said Hockley. "It kind of disrupts this immediate identification, perhaps even stereotyping that all of us are, you know, subject to." Rujeko Hockley with a work by artist Amy Sherald, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. CBS News It's not the only way to spot a Sherald painting. Hockley said one characteristic of the artist's work is her subjects' body language: "Very kind of solid, confident, not over-confident, but just really certain and still in [themselves]." The Sherald exhibition, said Hockley, is "a show that is really speaking to kind of overwhelmingly positive sense of connection, and kind of shared humanity, and kind of beauty that comes from being around one another, that comes from kind of seeing the humanity in another." For more info: But if you can't make it to New York, there are plenty of exhibits to visit this summer. Beloved impressionist works are on display at museums in Boston and Portland, Oregon. On view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is Van Gogh's 1889 portrait of Joseph Roulin (left). The Portland Art Museum is displaying its restoration of Claude Monet's 1914-15 "Waterlillies." Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY; Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon. Major contemporary artists are featured, too, from KAWS in Bentonville, Arkansas, to Jeffrey Gibson in Los Angeles. Works by KAWS, on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. (left), and by Jeffrey Gibson, at The Broad, Los Angeles. CBS News And, in Cleveland, things are looking especially bright thanks to the works of Takashi Murakami … one of the many exhibits giving us reason to smile this summer. A view of the exhibition "Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow," at the Cleveland Museum of Art. CBS News Story produced by Julie Kracov and Sara Kugel. Editor: George Pozderec.
Vogue
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
A Decade at the (New) Whitney: Art and Glamour Converge on the West Side
Michelle Monaghan, Maria Giulia Maramotti Tiffany Sage/ It was art imitating life—and life, of course, dressed in designer—as guests ascended the Whitney Museum for its annual Gala, held atop Manhattan's shimmering West Side. The evening marked more than just a celebration of the institution's 10-year anniversary in the Renzo Piano–designed building: it was a reunion of artists, collectors, patrons, and power-dressers who've long championed the museum's bold, contemporary vision. As twilight fell over the Hudson, so too did a stylish spell over the proceedings. There were thought-provoking speeches from the honorees—chairman Richard M. DeMartini, artist Amy Sherald, and legendary curator Barbara Haskell. An array of notables—Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb, Laura Harrier, Andie MacDowell, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Kathy Hilton, Claire Danes, and more—artfully intermingled in the museum's grandiose halls. But perhaps one of the real forces that brought the museum to life was the anniversary edition of Max Mara's Whitney bag. Back in 2015, Max Mara unveiled the Whitney Bag, an iconic piece created in collaboration with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop to mark the inauguration of the new Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. What began as a limited edition bag quickly became a highly sought-after accessory for women around the world. 'It's a unique piece to be honest. It's a bag like no other on the market, and that makes us very proud, as well as the idea of representing [the Whitney's] architectural design and blending that with the spirit of Max Mara's brand aesthetic,' Maria Giulia Maramotti, Max Mara Fashion Group Board Member and third generation of the Maramotti family, tells Vogue. And indeed, the bag quite literally animates the Whitney through its ribbed design, which mimics the museum's facade.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘White Lotus' Ladies, Tom Sachs and Reality Stars Lit Up the Whitney
The stars gathered at the Whitney Museum of American Art on Tuesday night for the institution's annual spring gala. Actresses, reality stars, conceptual artists, fashion designers, stylists, curators and R&B icons came together to celebrate the 95-year-old museum. During cocktails in Kenneth C. Griffin Hall, the actress Claire Danes chatted up a gaggle of men with a drink in hand. 'I love the Whitney,' Ms. Danes said, clad in a red dress by Max Mara, a sponsor for the evening. On the opposite side of the hall, the philanthropists Kathy and Rick Hilton, and their daughter Nicky Rothschild, collected fizzy drinks from a bar. 'They're here visiting from L.A., so it's a little family outing,' Ms. Rothschild said. Nearby, the actresses Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan held court, fresh off their run on the third season of 'The White Lotus.' 'When you come at night and get to go around and look at art and then come out into the Meatpacking District,' Ms. Bibb said, 'it's very sexy.' In front of the large, freightlike elevators, Ubah Hassan, a star of the 'The Real Housewives of New York City,' spoke with the stylist June Ambrose. Ms. Hassan, who wore a light blue Pamella Roland dress, said it was her first gala at the Whitney. 'I'm not very familiar with it,' Ms. Hassan said of the museum. 'Whenever I'm getting invited, I'm like 'I gotta go!'' The night's honorees included Amy Sherald, the contemporary artist whose first solo show at the Whitney, 'American Sublime,' opened on April 9. The artist is probably best known for her portrait of the former first lady Michelle Obama. But reviewing the show for The New York Times, the critic Deborah Solomon described Ms. Sherald 'as a painter of one-frame short stories, of fictions that bestow recognition on people you would not recognize.' The contemporary artist Glenn Ligon, who had a retrospective at the Whitney in 2011, said he felt it was urgent for Ms. Sherald's work to be shown at the museum. 'It's important that a museum like the Whitney is showing portraits of people that look like her at this moment when there's such, you know, demonization of D.E.I., artists of color and Black representation,' Mr. Ligon said. 'It's important that the Whitney has made this commitment.' After cocktails, guests were shuffled to dinner on the seventh floor of the museum. The large elevator doors opened to rows of tables in front of a gold, curtain-like back drop. The artist Jeff Koons, who presided over a table at the side of the stage, said Ms. Sherald's work is about sharing her personal growth with the world. Ms. Sherald's career opened up after she painted Ms. Obama, and her trajectory into museum shows followed. 'Amy has transcended herself,' Mr. Koons said. 'She's transcended her own life, and she's shared that with the community and that's what we feel when we look at her work.' Richard DeMartini, a member of Whitney's board since 2007, was also recognized alongside Barbara Haskell, a curator at the museum for about 50 years, who was celebrated for her longevity and her eye. 'The museum has changed so much, but in some ways, it hasn't changed at all,' Ms. Haskell said. 'I mean, visually, it's got bigger, more important but it's the fundamental values that first attracted me and have kept me here for 50 years.' The event raised about $6 million and midway through dinner, Judy Hart Angelo, a Whitney trustee, pledged another $1 million to support the Museum's free admissions program, which provides free entry to visitors under 25. The initiative started in December and has resulted in 400,000 free visits. It has also helped bring the number of visitors, which dropped because of the pandemic, back to about a million a year, according to Scott Rothkopf, the museum's director. The Hiltons sat together close to the stage. Nearby, Tom Sachs, the New York-based artist, chatted with a friend. 'The legacy of The Whitney is important,' Mr. Sachs said. 'When I first moved to New York, I always felt welcomed by the Whitney and its programs to help make art accessible are essential to the city. It's a place that embraces artists and art, going public equally and there's nothing more important than that for creating a sense of community in the arts institution in the city.' After dinner was served — filet mignon, of course — and the honorees gave speeches onstage, there was a final surprise. From the right side of the room, the remaining members of TLC, Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins and Rozonda 'Chilli' Thomas, appeared and the opening horns of their 1994 hit single, 'Creep' began to play. Two-thirds of the room seemed a bit confused as to who was performing and why. But at the foot of the stage, the artists, including Ms. Sherald and Jordan Casteel, sang along with the group's three-song medley, word for word.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Amy Sherald's Blue Sky Vision for America
It has been Amy Sherald's fate to be known for one painting only. Her portrait of Michelle Obama, commissioned in 2018 by the National Portrait Gallery, brought the artist overnight fame. Ignoring the conventions of academic portraiture, a genre associated with pale men standing in front of burgundy drapes, Sherald liberated America's first lady from the fusty, cigar-brown rooms of the past. Obama, dressed in a sleeveless gown, leans forward in her chair, channeling Rodin's 'Thinker.' The background, a featureless expanse of powder blue, suggests fresh air. The painting is an anomaly in Sherald's oeuvre. 'Amy Sherald: American Sublime,' a compact and rousing retrospective of 42 paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, brings us the work of an artist who is not primarily a recorder of first ladies or famous faces. Rather, Sherald is a painter of one-frame short stories, of fictions that bestow recognition on people you would not recognize. She can be preachy, but her paintings are saved from sentimentality by an unerring sense of geometric design and a taste for spare, simplified, super-flat planes. Stepping off the elevator on the fifth floor of the museum, you find yourself contemplating a curved, rather amazing wall hung with five life-size portraits, each in a different sizzling color. 'The Girl Next Door' (2019), my favorite, shows a young woman in a white polka-dot dress, silhouetted against an emerald green background. Compared with the effortlessly attractive girl-next-door we know from countless films, Sherald has painted a touchingly awkward woman, her red leather belt rising up from her waist to her chest. But you can see that she is trying to look her best. Her immaculate dress, her red lipstick, her fixed-up hair with its attractive side part, are careful efforts at self-presentation that speak volumes about American girlhood. Sherald, who is 51, composes her scenes with extreme deliberation. She picks out models for her paintings and outfits them with costumes and props. She photographs them and works from her reference photographs to situate Black faces and figures into roles and settings complete with suburban lawns, white picket fences and other nostalgic symbols of American plenty. Here is a world in which it is usually summer, and days are squinty bright and shadowless. 'I'm an escapist,' Sherald once said in an interview. 'I love the Teletubbies — the idea of grass with no bugs makes me happy.' Her titles add another layer of fictional intrigue. Sometimes taken from novels or poems, they alternately heroicize her figures or gently poke fun at the human capacity for small, foolish, everyday self-deceptions. For instance, 'It Made Sense … Mostly in her Mind' (2011), shows a 30-ish woman dressed in a timeless navy blazer with gold buttons. She could be a lawyer until you notice she's wearing a lavender plastic helmet and holding an old-fashioned toy, a pink-and-white unicorn stick horse. It doesn't add up, but you can't say Sherald didn't warn us: The outfit did make sense … mostly in the subject's wishful and daydreamy mind. In some ways, Sherald's paintings are re-enactments of the childhood game of dress up. She is drawn to loud, retro-ish fabrics — to wide stripes and dresses imprinted with floral patterns or strewed with rows of strawberries or cherries or lemons. She excels at painting pleated skirts, their folds of fabric as stately and evenly spaced as ancient Greek columns. And note the exaggeratedly clean ambience. White shirts gleam with Tide-strength brightness, and khakis remain unblemished by mystery grease stains. You cannot find fresher clothing in the work of any contemporary painter, with the exception of Alex Katz, the pre-eminent realist, now in his 90s, who similarly garbs his figures in shirts and pants that look as if they were removed five minutes earlier from a J. Crew gift box. In the case of both artists, the squeaky-clean attire echoes in the formal neatness of their respective painting styles. In Sherald's case, at times I found myself searching in vain for any sign of an emphatic brush stroke, a trace of touch. This is especially true in a series of larger-than-life genre scenes that represent her more recent work. 'A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt),' from 2022, a mural-size painting stretching 11 feet wide, shows a man sitting atop a brand-new green tractor. What's problematic is that Sherald's instinct for pristine surfaces — which adds so much allure to her images of clothing — makes the tractor look as blandly commercial as an item in a mail-order catalog. The man could be sitting in a printed ad for a John Deere 820. Sherald's vertical portraits, by contrast, retain their pictorial charisma despite a certain repetitiveness. Nearly all of the portraits in the show, which go back to 2008, are exactly the same size (54 inches by 43 inches). The figures in her paintings, whether men, women or children, tend to have the same unblinking, inscrutable expression. They gaze at you alertly but noncommittedly, as if listening in silent judgment as you tell them a story that doesn't quite make sense. Born in Columbus, Ga., in 1973, Sherald majored in fine art at Clark Atlanta, a historically Black university. She moved to Baltimore to attend graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art, earning her M.F.A. in 2004. She has spoken openly about her health issues. She was just finishing graduate school when she was diagnosed with idiopathic cardiomyopathy, a serious heart condition. One day in 2012 she passed out in a Rite Aid pharmacy and woke up in a pool of blood. She was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she waited two months for a donor's heart and then underwent surgery for a heart transplant. Four years passed. In 2016, she rose to wide attention when she became the first woman and the first Black person to be awarded the grand prize in the National Portrait Gallery's prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which is open to any artist in the United States. Her entry, 'Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)' (2014), is a coolly charming portrait of a Black woman in a bold polka-dot dress. She holds, in her white-gloved hands, an impossibly large teacup and saucer, exemplifying Sherald's tendency to mingle realism and fantasy. 'Kingdom' (2022), for instance — one of the standouts of the show — is a low-angled, 10-foot-tall view of a schoolboy perched on the top rung of a playground slide, his spiky, stand-up hair silhouetted against a blue sky. In a sherpa-lined denim jacket, tan pants and unscuffed white sneakers, he could be any boy of 8 or 9, anyone's brother or son. Except that he occupies the pinnacle of the painting's Renaissance-style triangular composition, looming above us, a momentary king of the universe. Sublime or Not Sublime? So how should we categorize Sherald's style? 'American Sublime,' which was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has a baffling title. The word 'sublime,' an art-historical term, refers to art that inspires rapture or terror in a viewer, usually in response to the enormousness and grandeur of nature. When you open the Sherald exhibition catalog to Page 10 and see a full-page reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich's 'Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog' (1817), an icon of German romanticism that appeared in a show that just closed at the Met, you wonder if you picked up the wrong catalog. Sherald's work is not sublime, but in its emphasis on the transforming power of clothing, it can fairly be called 'superfine,' to borrow a word from the title of another Met show.` Sherald, it seems clear, is an American realist, recording ordinary people and pleasures. Her work is reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's illustrations for the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. He, too, combined and recombined reference photographs of his models to construct narratives of optimism and uplift about everyday Americans. One of Rockwell's acolytes, the painter Bo Bartlett, is a well-known realist, now 69, also from Columbus, Ga. Once, as a schoolgirl, Sherald saw a large-scale painting at the Columbus Museum that showed a Black man standing proudly outside a small brick house; it was painted by Bartlett, who is white. Sherald, who said she had never seen a painting of a Black person before, has described the moment as life changing, awakening her to how she wanted to spend her future. Even now, her genre scenes, especially 'A Midsummer Afternoon Dream' (2021), nod to Bartlett's luminous, blue-skied landscapes. Sherald also owes something to Horace Pippin, the pioneering, early-20th-century Black artist. In his 'Self-Portrait' (1941) at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, he rendered his face as a mask of gray monotone. Sherald similarly depicts the skin tones of her figures in neutral gray rather than in natural browns. She has said that she uses grayscale to sidestep the issue of racial categorization. Yet she does take on politics, especially in her 'Breonna Taylor' (2020), an ethereal turquoise-on-turquoise portrait of the 26-year-old medical worker who was killed in her own apartment in Louisville, Ky., in a botched police raid. 'American Sublime' will no doubt acquire a sharper political edge on Sept. 19, when it opens at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The Portrait Gallery is part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution and consequently vulnerable to recent orders from the executive branch seeking to dismantle or reshape programs that give off a whiff of diversity, equity or inclusion. The irony is that Sherald's work is not about categorizing one group or class of people. Rather it's about characterizing folks with visibly different lives, ranging from a schoolgirl in pig tails to a legless boxer resting against ropes of red, white and blue, to a tall, transgender woman in a hot-pink wig and high-slit dress posing as the Statue of Liberty. It is cliché these days to say that we want to 'feel seen' or validated, but here's the question: If we are all hoping to feel seen, who will be left to do the looking? Sherald, for one.
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Arts and culture are also key tools of diplomacy
Amy Sherald's new exhibition, 'American Sublime,' recently opened at the Whitney Museum in New York City and will travel this fall to the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Sherald's famed portraits — powerful, dignified, and deeply rooted in identity and representation — remind us why the arts are a matter of great significance. They spark dialogue during times when honest conversations about race, identity, and history are most needed. In a time of shifting alliances and political uncertainty, freedom of artistic expression isn't just culturally relevant — it's a vital tool of soft power that can help build trust, foster dialogue, and extend U.S. influence in ways traditional diplomacy cannot. I know this from experience. When I was appointed U.S. ambassador to Portugal in 2022, I had not risen through the traditional ranks of the Foreign Service but came from a background steeped in the arts. Having served as a commissioner at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, I first met Sherald when she was chosen as a winner of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. This marked the beginning of my admiration for her work. Her portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, a nuanced portrayal of both strength and grace, became a touchstone in contemporary portraiture, sparking dialogue among art critics, community leaders, and tourists alike. This fall, Sherald's exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery will mark a full-circle moment — a vivid reminder of how art bridges lives and legacies across time and space. When it came time to curate my Arts in Embassies exhibit during my tenure in Portugal, I knew Sherald's work had to be included. A State Department initiative founded under President Kennedy, the Arts in Embassies program places works by American and international artists in U.S. embassies worldwide, using visual arts as a powerful form of diplomacy. We curated a rotating collection in our residence that reflected our nation's diversity: Asian, African, Mexican, Jewish, and women artists, to name a few – all represented in a shared space. And, of course, Portuguese artists, highlighting the dialogue between our two countries. These important, creative works sparked conversation at every gathering — about identity, storytelling, creativity, and freedom. The walls of the Ambassador's residence became more than décor — they became a living exhibition of the values our nations share, and the essential conversations we must have. Witnessing the success of this exhibit, we continued using arts and culture as tools to connect communities, open dialogue, and strengthen mutual understanding throughout my ambassadorship. These varied initiatives — targeted in scale but powerful in impact — built bridges across communities that traditional diplomacy is often unable to reach. When used properly, cultural diplomacy strengthens national security. When I first arrived in Portugal, after COVID and the absence of an ambassador for 16 months, China had taken over the public discourse in the media on issues like freedom of speech, women's rights, and the rule of law. Part of my strategy for deploying a cultural diplomacy program was to take back the narrative and use the public forum to put forward our American values — to fill that space and prevent bad actors from enhancing their public influence. Now, upon returning home, the shifting political landscape has underscored the importance of applying these tools in the U.S. As the current administration enacts new policies that shift our transatlantic ties, using the arts as a tool of diplomacy isn't just symbolic — it's strategic. Sharing our patchwork of cultures and ideas through creative expression can aid us greatly in building people-to-people ties worldwide. Policymakers must keep funding cultural diplomacy initiatives. Artists must keep creating. And to the public, go see Sherald's exhibit at the Whitney. Beyond being a stunning display of an individual's talent, it's a reminder of the powerful role art can play in shaping our nation's future. Randi Charno Levine is a diplomat, arts advocate, and author who served as the U.S. ambassador to Portugal from April 2022, to January 2025. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
