Amid a culture of fear, a celebrated artist's most important exhibition is pulled from Smithsonian

Boston Globe

5 days ago

And it appears that Sherald's 'Trans Forming Liberty,' her 2024 portrait of a transgender woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty, rattled museum leadership in a climate of deep hostility from the administration toward transgender people.
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Installation view of Amy Sherald: American Sublime (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, April 9-August 10, 2025). Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama, 2018. (Tiffany Sage/BFA.com)
Tiffany Sage/BFA.com
Sherald said the Portrait Gallery had proposed replacing the painting in D.C. with a video of viewers' reactions both to it and transgender issues more broadly. In a
the museum countered, saying it wanted the video to accompany, not replace, the painting. Either way, no agreement could be struck, and Sherald withdrew.
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'The video would have opened up for debate the value of trans visibility and I was opposed to that being a part of the 'American Sublime' narrative,' Sherald told the New York Times.
'Unfortunately, we could not come to an agreement with the artist. We remain appreciative and inspired by Ms. Sherald, her artwork and commitment to portraiture,' the museum
But even without 'Trans Forming Liberty,' it's a fair guess the show would have been under external pressures: Sherald's paintings are for the most part elegant, precise portraits of unnamed Black subjects painted life-sized. There are two exceptions in the exhibition. The first is her portrait of Breonna Taylor, a memorial image painted with dignified beauty of the innocent Black woman
but weary grace. It was the exhibition's centerpiece, an emblem of the artist's larger project to build Black life into a canon of American art long indifferent to its inclusion.
Artist Amy Sherald with her portrait of the late Breonna Taylor.
Joseph Hyde/Vanity Fair
Either one might easily raise the ire of the current administration. We don't have to look very long, or very far, to parse the current president's view of Obama's husband.
On his Truth Social website this week, the 47th president posted a shockingly raw AI-generated video of former President Barack Obama being violently arrested in the Oval Office and dragged away in handcuffs. But there's more here than a simple obsessive animus, one president to another (though it's also clearly that).
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The current administration's blunt enforcement of what it deems acceptable expression now touches virtually all aspects of American life. That includes media (as in the 60 Minutes lawsuit debacle), entertainment (the cancellation of 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' a known Trump tormentor), and higher education (see the administration's roughshod bullying of Harvard and Columbia over its specious claims of antisemitism).
A favorite target of the Trump administration, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion efforts by government, private business, and educational institutions, looms over Sherald's withdrawal, too. The most recent addition to the constellation of Smithsonians,
the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was one of the second Trump administration's prime targets.
In a March executive order titled '
(It also singled out the Smithsonian's Museum of American Art and the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum.)
In May, when
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Here in Massachusetts, the National Endowment for the Arts in May refused to disburse funds already promised to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for 'Power Full Because We're Different,'
Which brings us back to Sherald, ensnared by the strident decree of a cultural bureaucracy in deep regressive mode. To be clear: This was her decision. She chose not to compromise her integrity and intentions, which have been consistent and clear from the start. She had been making portraits of Black subjects for years when the invitation to paint Michelle Obama arrived. It is completely in tune with her core sensibility to capture her subjects simply, truthfully, as they are.
Ruth Erickson from Cambridge with Jullian Kalim, 8, and his brother Cassidy Kalim, 3, looked at portraits of the Obamas at the MFA Boston in 2022.
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
But the Obama portrait arrived in 2018 less as a painting than a heavy symbol amid a violent lurch in American life: From a two-term president who became a beacon of Black achievement to a political outsider openly hostile to the progress his predecessor seemed to embody.
When the painting went on national tour in 2022, along with Kehinde Wiley's portrait of the former president, it drew crowds, including
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But is pulling back, in this moment, this place, defiance or acquiescence? That's a larger question that artists, thinkers, and institutions are grappling with in every corner and context. Either way, it's an outcome enjoyed primarily by just one person, and we know who that is.
Murray Whyte can be reached at