The National Portrait Gallery commissioned Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald for portraits of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, respectively.
Last week, Amy Sherald ’04 (LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting M.F.A.), who recently joined MICA’s Painting faculty as the McMillan/Stewart Endowed Chair, was announced as one of two artists commissioned to paint the official portraits of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
Sherald, whose painting Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) was the first-prize winner of the Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, will paint former First Lady Michelle Obama’s portrait, and Kehinde Wiley will paint former President Barack Obama’s portrait. Sherald and Wiley are the first African-American artists commissioned by the Smithsonian to paint presidential portraits, and their portraits will join the Gallery’s permanent collection of approximately 1,600 presidential portraits. The works will go on display at the museum in early 2018.
“The Portrait Gallery is absolutely delighted that Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald have agreed to create the official portraits of our former President and First Lady,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, in a statement. “Both have achieved enormous success as artists, but even more, they make art that reflects the power and potential of portraiture in the 21st century.”
Visit npg.si.edu for more information. View Sherald's work at amysherald.com.
Amy Sherald received her M.F.A. from MICA’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting (2004), B.A. in Painting from Clark-Atlanta University (1997) and was a Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence in Portobelo, Panama (1997). In 2016, Sherald was the first woman to win the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition grand prize; an accompanying exhibition, The Outwin 2016, has been on tour since 2016 and will open at the Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO in October 2017. Sherald has had solo shows at venues including Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago (2016); Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore (2013); and University of North Carolina, Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Chapel Hill (2011). In May 2018 she will present a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis.
Founded in 1826, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is the oldest continuously degree-granting college of art and design in the nation. The College enrolls over 3,000 undergraduate, graduate and continuing studies students from 49 states and 65 countries in fine arts, design, electronic media, art education, liberal arts, and professional studies degree and non-credit programs. With art and design programs ranked in the top ten by U.S. News and World Report, MICA is pioneering interdisciplinary approaches to innovation, research, and community and social engagement. Alumni and programming reach around the globe, even as MICA remains a cultural cornerstone in the Baltimore/Washington region, hosting hundreds of exhibitions and events annually by students, faculty and other established artists.
