There’s an incredible exhibit at SF MOMA right now, “Amy Sherald: American Sublime.” If you haven’t seen this collection of almost 50 large-scale portraits of Black Americans in an array of thoughtful conversation-sparking paintings—including the famous, official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama—it’s time to go: The show closes March 9.
Particularly in the middle of Black History Month, it’s important to call attention to two important exhibitions at the SF MOMA that showcase the work of two contemporary Black women artists; Kara Walker’s installation with a fortune-telling automaton is in the free part of the museum through spring 2026, and when I popped down to see it again on this visit, children were enthralled before it, waiting for the slips of paper to issue from its mouth. Look closely and you’ll find a connection between the two artists, too. In one room of Sherald’s show, there’s a to-scale photograph of her bookshelves and I scanned the spines with interest to see that a big book on Kara Walker was included (as was one on San Francisco figurative painter Joan Brown). Contemporaries in their 50s, both Walker (back in 1997) and now Sherald have had solo shows at the SF MOMA.
In this room, a video plays in which we see Sherald visiting her childhood home in Georgia. In the video, Sherald references artists Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth and says, “I want my work to join a larger conversation” of being “an American realist,” and later, “it just so happens that painting Black people turns out to be political.”
As I walked through the galleries, I was struck by the gorgeous colors and patterns of the clothes worn by the sitters (or in this case, standers—almost all of the people depicted in the paintings stand, usually facing the viewer). Textile patterns and florals pop against the bright backgrounds. Since 2007, Sherald’s chosen to render the skin color of her Black models in a silvered black-and-white rather than various shades of black or brown. As one didactic explains, this is a “strategy that de-emphasizes race and focuses attention on the sitters’ interior lives and the story contained within each painting.” The technique is called grisaille, and Sherald says the decision was also tied in with appreciating black-and-white photography of her own grandmother.
One work that’s bound to emotionally affect viewers is Breonna Taylor, which depicts the woman who was shot and killed by police officers in her own home in 2020 during a botched raid. This portrait was commissioned by Vanity Fair and ran on its front cover (a copy of the magazine sits near the painting). Taylor was killed in March 2020, and Sherald’s haunting portrait was painted in time to appear in the September issue. In the exhibition video, Sherald talks about how she painted her as she imagined Taylor would’ve wanted to appear on a magazine cover, in a designer dress and wearing an engagement ring as a symbol of the future that was stolen from her. It was acquired by the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Sherald’s work pushes back against stereotypes. One painting is titled Welfare Queen and shows a well-off woman wearing pearls and a crown, a literal “queen.”
Another, For Love, and for Country, riffs on Alfred Eisenstadt’s famous photograph of a couple in Times Square on V-J Day 1945. In that photo, a male sailor bends backward a woman in a white uniform (she is a dental assistant) as her foot lolls behind her. This has long been interpreted as an exhilarated, passionate kiss upon learning the war was over (but has a more complex backstory, as the woman in the image has said the kiss was nonsexual and in other Eisenstadt frames of the same event, she is seen defensively punching the man). Whether Sherald knew that complicated history or not, she has recast the duo as two male sailors. The exhibition’s video reveals the process behind this painting: two models try different aspects of the famous pose as Sherald adjusts them and photographs them. It’s a stunning reenvisioning of the photo that advocates for “another understanding of masculinity through the iconic pose, recasting the kiss with a gay couple,” the didactic explains. It also spotlights the idea that Black soldiers “returned from the war with less fanfare.”
The painting of Michelle Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, is in a room alone, just like the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. This painting drew headlines when it was first unveiled in 2018; a photograph of a two-year-old girl standing in front of it, awestruck, went viral for the girl’s sweet refusal to stop looking at it and turn around so her mom could take her photo. In it, Obama is painted in grisaille almost as if she is a black-and-white photograph, and she wears a flowing halter dress with patterns on it reminiscent of the Gee’s Bend quilts (San Franciscans may remember the extraordinary exhibition “The Quilters of Gee’s Bend” at the de Young in 2006–07, which showcased creative, modern quilts sewn by four generations of Black women in Alabama).
A bench allows viewers to sit and linger in front of the massive painting, which measures in at six feet tall and five feet wide. And that’s just what Tracie Staten-Mirch was doing on a recent Saturday. She asked me to take her photo with the painting, and we began to chat about the impact it has had on her. “(Obama) broke the barrier, what she’s accomplished on her own. She’s a force of her own with her inner strength. She is a beacon of white light and she fights for everybody and wants the best of all of us. I respect her as Michelle Obama, not just as first lady,” said Staten-Mirch. She had already seen both this portrait and Barack Obama’s, painted by Kehinde Wiley, when an exhibition called the Obama Portraits Tour came to the SF MOMA in 2022. “(Sherald) reflects Black American life as what can be, what can happen,” said Staten-Mirch.
In the next room, you’ll find Innocent You, Innocent Me, the 2016 painting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old boy shot in 2012 by George Zimmerman, who was accused of racial profiling but ultimately acquitted of second-degree murder. (Zimmerman later auctioned off the gun with which he killed Martin for $250,000 and attempted to sue the victim’s family for $100 million, a suit that was dismissed). Zimmerman’s acquittal for Martin’s killing gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. In Sherald’s painting, Martin is painted in a bright yellow-and-white–striped hoodie over a camouflage T-shirt with four cartoon Avengers characters on it. He is holding a pink ice cream cone. The overall sensation the viewers receives is of the harmlessness and youth of this child.
As a writer, I loved the literary allusions that play throughout the portrait titles (referencing Lucille Clifton, Emily Dickinson and Zora Neale Hurston). The paintings are so polished it’s sometimes hard to find brush strokes; you peer to catch the light and see the artist’s hand in the work.
In the final gallery, Everyday Americans, the paintings’ backgrounds of salmon, lemon, cerulean and mint are drenched in color to play against the sitters’ textiles—it’s like a dream of couture. The last portrait of the show is Trans Forming Liberty, a recent 2024 piece. In it, a trans woman in an electric blue dress and pink wig holds up Liberty’s torch, reenvisioned as a vase holding flowers. It’s a painting that supports trans people, reminding us that Lady Liberty lifts her lamp beside the golden door for everyone.
As you return for a round trip through the galleries, you’re reminded that the sitters of these paintings most often stare out at you, the viewer, as if inviting you to engage and make a connection. As the gallery didactic reads, “Each person in this gallery communicates tranquil confidence and unwavering self-possession.”