Amy Sherald: American Sublime | Opening Night Speech

"We stand here tonight, in defiance of erasure. We stand in presence of beauty, of history, of ourselves, and we will not be moved," said Amy Sherald, on opening night of Amy Sherald: American Sublime at the Whitney Museum. 

American Sublime is on view on the 5th floor of the Whitney Museum, closing on August 10th, 2025. Sherald considers herself an inheritor of the American Realist tradition of artists such as Edward Hopper—a genre that was central to the Whitney’s origins nearly a century ago; however, those artists focused on the lives of everyday white Americans. Instead, Sherald privileges a population that has historically been omitted from art history and wider visual representation. By doing so, she challenges us to think more broadly about American Realism, suggesting an additional lineage for it: one born from the art departments and galleries of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), where she first trained as an artist, and one that includes such underrecognized figures as William H. Johnson, Archibald Motley, and Laura Wheeler Waring, among others. Across Amy Sherald: American Sublime, Sherald’s contemplative subjects appear most concerned with their own interiority, prioritizing their own peace and self-realization over how others might perceive them and the shackles of history, though they are inevitably impacted by both. Her audacious project highlights what she has called the “wonder of what it is to be a Black American,” rendering a rich and unconstrained Black world in vibrant Technicolor. 

Amy Sherald: American Sublime is organized by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This exhibition is curated by Sarah Roberts, former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. The presentation at the Whitney Museum of American Art is organized by Rujeko Hockley, Arnhold Associate Curator with David Lisbon, curatorial assistant.