Sherald painted this now-famous painting of Michelle Obama
that hangs in the
National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian.
"Sherald became famous after her portrait of the former first lady, Michelle Obama, was unveiled in 2018. Attention grew with Sherald’s portrait of Breonna Taylor, the Black medical worker who was killed in 2020 by police in Louisville, Ky., during a raid on her home. It remains one of the best known pictures of protest and resilience to come out of the Black Lives Matter movement."
"Born in Columbus, Ga., Sherald was brought up in a religious family. Her father, a dentist and a trumpeter, had them join the fundamentalist Worldwide Church of God; the Sheralds were its only Black members, she recalled. They celebrated the Sabbath on Friday night and Saturday; honored Old Testament holy days, including Passover, during which they ate matzoh; and dispensed with Christmas and Easter, as well as birthdays and Halloween. All-white, too, was the Catholic school Amy attended from kindergarten through high school.
She knew from second grade that she wanted to be an artist, and that it would involve hard work. She also would have to sort out a rather complicated identity. Her maternal great-grandfather, she explained, was a German Jew named William. “The story we have is that he was a tailor,” Sherald said, and that “my great-grandmother married a Black man, but she did have these two children with William.” When Sherald entered Clark Atlanta, a historically Black university, she left the church and did not return."
