{"id":45057,"date":"2025-09-05T10:09:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45057\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T10:09:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T10:09:17","slug":"amy-sheralds-canceled-smithsonian-show-goes-to-baltimore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/45057\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy Sherald’s Canceled Smithsonian Show Goes to Baltimore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAmy Sherald<\/a>\u2018s exhibition \u201cAmerican Sublime\u201d is now expected to open at the Baltimore Museum of Art<\/a> (BMA) in November. The announcement<\/a> follows the artist\u2019s decision to cancel<\/a> the iteration planned at the Smithsonian in July amid censorship concerns.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPresenting\u00a0American Sublime\u00a0at the BMA is a celebration of our creative community and a joyful reunion with those shaped by Amy\u2019s extraordinary power to connect,\u201d BMA museum director Asma Naeem said in a statement. \u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to share her transformational work with our visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Amy<\/p>\n

\n\tThe show will be a kind of homecoming for the artist, who attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and spent part of her career in Baltimore. Her work was previously acquired by the BMA and she also formerly served on the museum\u2019s board.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBaltimore has always been part of my DNA as an artist. Every brushstroke carries a little of its history, its energy, its people, and my time there. To bring this exhibition here is to return that love,\u201d Sherald said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\n\tSherald became a household name in 2018 thanks to her\u00a0portrait of Michelle Obama<\/a>. Today, she is best known for her pensive pastel renderings of Black Americans imbued with melancholy and joy, underpinned by the political realities of American life.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmerican Sublime\u201d features some 50 works by Sherald, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive presentations of her work yet. It was originally organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and subsequently traveled to the Whitney Museum, where it is on view through August 10. The iteration set for the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery would have marked the first solo presentation of its kind by a Black contemporary artist at the institution.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn July, Sherald chose to cancel the Smithsonian iteration, however, after the museum considered removing her painting of a Black transgender Statue of Liberty,\u00a0the New York Times\u00a0reported<\/a>, instead replacing it with a video of reactions and a discussion of trans concerns. Sherald objected over concerns that the video would include anti-trans views.<\/p>\n

\n\tA Smithsonian spokesperson recently clarified with the Washington Post<\/a> that Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian who runs the Portrait Gallery, wanted the video to accompany the painting, adding that the museum reportedly offered to further contextualize her work.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, however, Sherald spoke out<\/a> in an op-ed article about government censorship at the Smithsonian. Therein, she cautioned: \u201cMuseums are not stages for loyalty.\u00a0They are civic laboratories. They are places where we wrestle with contradictions, encounter the unfamiliar and widen our circle of empathy. But only if they remain free.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf they do not, we lose more than exhibitions. We lose the public spaces where imagination takes a stand against power. And when that happens, the stories we inherit and the futures we can envision will no longer be our own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA couple weeks before Sherald officially canceled her show, it was reported that\u00a0Smithsonian Institution\u2019s exhibitions would\u00a0undergo a review by the White House<\/a>, which claimed the institution\u2019s shows have skewed too far from \u201cthe greatness of our nation or the millions of Americans who have contributed to its progress\u201d and should, instead,\u00a0\u201ccelebrate American exceptionalism\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe White House subsequently released a list targeting specific artworks <\/a>housed within the institution.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing weeks of speculation about how the\u00a0institution\u00a0would respond, including a lunch meeting between Bunch and President Donald Trump<\/a>, Bunch announced in a letter to staff on Wednesday that the institution has assembled a team <\/a>to review materials to be handed over to the White House, ultimately stressing that the Smithsonian remains independent.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough the Smithsonian receives about two-thirds of its $1 billion annual budget from the federal government, it is not considered a federal entity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amy Sherald\u2018s exhibition \u201cAmerican Sublime\u201d is now expected to open at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[33862,365,362,363,364,33863,366,18,117,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-45057","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-amy-sherald","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-baltimore-museum-of-art","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}