We visited Sherald, Michelle Obama’s official portrait painter, to learn more about her artwork and philosophy.
Amy Sherald. Courtesy of the artist and Justin T. Gellerson.
Amy Sherald is trying to reshape art history. The Baltimore-based artist, whose powerful portraits of African Americans are making waves in the current cultural conversation, is the 2018 winner of the High Museum’s Driskell Prize.
Each year, the Driskell Prize honors an artist or art historian who has made significant contributions to the arts of the African diaspora. Looking through the annals of art history and at the walls of museums around the country, Sherald notices a stark absence of representations of people of color. She recognizes the power she has as a figurative painter to correct this narrative and shift expectations of the kinds of art people might see in a museum.