May 15 – September 27, 2026 | Timed Tickets Required
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Exclusive access on Friday nights from 5-9 p.m. and an exclusive exhibition poster.
Visitors can purchase a VIP ticket to enjoy the exhibition after hours, with fewer crowds, and access to a cash bar from 5 to 9 p.m. every Friday night throughout the run of this exhibition. During VIP nights, the rest of the museum will close as normal at 5 p.m. On Fridays when there are High Frequency Friday or Friday Jazz events, the entire museum — including Amy Sherald — is open until 9 p.m. You must have a VIP Ticket in order to view Amy Sherald during High Frequency Friday or Friday Jazz. A VIP ticket will also give access to High Frequency Friday or Friday Jazz, on nights when those programs are concurrent.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime Timed-Tickets
Visitors will need a separate timed-ticket to view Amy Sherald: American Sublime. This ticket will include access to the rest of the museum.
This exhibition sold out in its most recent venue. We expect weekend slots to fill up quickly. Become a member to access your free tickets first.
Learn more on our FAQ page.
The High Museum of Art is proud to join the national tour for Amy Sherald’s acclaimed mid-career retrospective, which is the largest exhibition of her work to date. Featuring a broad range of paintings made from 2007 to 2024, the presentation will include many of Sherald’s most iconic works, along with rarely seen paintings spanning her career.
Born in Columbus, Georgia, Sherald has deep ties to Atlanta and to the High. She trained as a painter in the city and graduated from Clark Atlanta University. In 2018, the High awarded her its annual David C. Driskell Prize in African American Art and Art History, the first national award to recognize the importance of African American art. The museum presented The Obama Portraits Tour, featuring her renowned portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, in 2022.
The High is the fourth and final venue for this exhibition, which is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), where it debuted in 2024, and which previously traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The exhibition will be on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art (November 2, 2025–April 5, 2026) before it comes to Atlanta.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons), 2024, oil on linen, Jennifer Gilbert Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Kelvin Bulluck, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
The flash of red provided by this young girl’s hat draws attention to her inquiring gaze. She holds a playfully oversized cup—a nod to Lewis Carroll’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)—that gives the painting a slightly surreal feeling. After more than a decade of dedicating herself to painting, Sherald gained national attention when this work won first prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. She was the first woman and the first African American to win the competition.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance), 2014, oil on canvas, private collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Jon Etter, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
These two young women hold hands as they confidently eye the viewer. Their relationship to one another is ambiguous: They could be sisters, lovers, or friends. Bathers have served as popular subjects in Western art for hundreds of years, particularly in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European painting. Artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Georges Seurat (1859–1891), and Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) often depicted White subjects relaxing near rivers and pools. Sherald’s vision instead centers Black women standing in their agency, embracing leisure, ease, joy, and respite, broadening their representation within the visual history of Western painting.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), The Bathers, 2015, oil on canvas, private collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), A Midsummer Afternoon Dream, 2021, oil on canvas, private collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt), 2022, oil on linen, Tymure Collection. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Amy Sherald (American, born Columbus, Georgia, 1973), Kingdom, 2022, oil on linen, The Broad Art Foundation. © Amy Sherald. Photo by Joseph Hyde, courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
Fewer crowds. More time with the art. A cash bar. Amy Sherald: American Sublime VIP Nights give you the full experience, every Friday evening from 5 to 9 p.m.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | “High Museum to showcase Amy Sherald’s uncensored retrospective next summer”
ArtsATL | “The 2026 Spring Arts Preview: Our picks in Art + Design”
The AEC Trust
Sarah and Jim Kennedy
The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation
Robin and Hilton Howell
Great Neck Richman (Richman Family Foundation)
Sara and Paul Steinfeld
Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Mr. and Mrs. Hunter S. Allen
Robin and Vanessa Delmer
Mary and Neil Johnson
Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones
Megan and Garrett Langley
Bert and Barbara Levy
Massey Charitable Trust
Margot and Danny McCaul
Sally and Allen McDaniel
Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller
Louise Sams and Jerome Grilhot
Lisa Cannon Taylor and Chuck Taylor
Elizabeth and Chris Willett
Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund
Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund
Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund
Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund
Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund
The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund
Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund
Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund
John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund
Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund
Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund
RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund
