After pulling her exhibition from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery over the Trump administration’s anti-transgender censorship, Amy Sherald’s “American Sublime” will be on view at the High Museum of Art next year.
The Atlanta museum announced in a press release that the touring retrospective of the Georgia artist’s career will be on exhibition from May 15 to Sept. 27, 2026
“The High Museum of Art is proud to join the national tour for “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” the acclaimed mid-career retrospective for the Georgia native and the largest exhibition of her work to date,” the High said in the release.
Featuring a broad range of paintings made from 2007 to 2024, the presentation will include many of Sherald’s most iconic works, along with rarely seen paintings spanning her career.
Born in Columbus, GA, Sherald has deep ties to Atlanta and to the High, according to the release. She trained as a painter in the city and graduated from Clark Atlanta University. In 2018, the High awarded her its annual David C. Driskell Prize in African American Art and Art History, the first national award to recognize the importance of African American art.
The museum also presented “The Obama Portraits Tour,” featuring her renowned portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, in 2022.
According to Capital B. Atlanta, “American Sublime” would have been the first Black contemporary artist to be featured at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., but Sherald pulled the exhibition after hearing “internal concerns” about her painting “Trans Forming Liberty,” a portrait of the Statue of Liberty depicted as a trans woman.
The High is the fourth venue for this exhibition, which is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where it debuted in 2024, and which previously traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition will be on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art (Nov. 2, 2025-April 5, 2026) before it comes to Atlanta.
