Amy Sherald (American b. Columbus, GA 1973, lives Baltimore) received her MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2004), BA in Painting from Clark-Atlanta University (1997), and was a Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence in Portobelo, Panama (1997).
Sherald is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting and Sculpture Grant (2014), a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2013), and was the Juror’s Pick for New American Paintings Issue 88 (2010). In 2016, Sherald was the first woman and first African American ever to receive the grand prize in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, for which her work will be added to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Collection. An accompanying exhibition, The Outwin 2016, traveled to venues through 2018, including the Tacoma Art Museum and The Kemper Museum. Sheral is the subject of the major museum survey exhibition, Amy Sherald: American Sublime which debuted at SFMONA, San Francisco, CA (2024-25), and travels to the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2025) and the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., (2025).
Along with her first solo exhibition in Chicago at moniquemeloche (2016), Sherald has had solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Hauser & Wirth, Monaco, MC, London, UK, Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Museum of Fine Arts, Spelman College, Atlanta, GA; Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Baltimore, MD; Richard Demato Fine Arts, Sag Harbor, NY, and the University of North Carolina, Sonja Haynes Stone Center, Chapel Hill, NC. Sherald’s work has also ben included in notable group exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Brooklyn Museum, NY; MCA Los Angeles, CA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL, US Embassy Dakar, Senegal, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., and was part of Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art, which originated at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2016), and traveled to the Speed Museum of Art, Louisville, KY (2017) and The Studio Museum in Harlem (2017). Sherald’s work has been published in The New York Times, Transitions: International Review, The International Review of African American Art, New American Paintings, Studio: Studio Museum in Harlem Magazine, among others. Among her many artist residencies, highlights include Tong Xion Art Center, Beijing, China (2008) and Odd Nerdrum Private Study, Larvik, Norway (2005), and most recently, Creative Art Alliance, Balitmore (2016). Sherald’s work is in notable public collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Smithsonian Museum of African American Art and Culture, Washington, D.C.; and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.