January 26, 2026
Award-winning portraitist Amy Sherald has new backing as a part of the Creative Artists Agency.
Amy Sherald, the acclaimed artist behind the official portrait of former first woman Michelle Obama, is taking her work to new heights after signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA).
The information of Sherald’s signing with CAA broke on Jan. 21, marking one other high-profile crossover between the artwork world and Hollywood, Art News studies. The Columbus, Georgia, native has continued to rise in prominence since being commissioned by the previous first woman in 2018 to color her official portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
The portrait is wealthy with symbolism, exhibiting Obama in grayscale towards a pale blue background, her chin resting thoughtfully on her hand, and carrying a checkered Milly costume by Michelle Smith, impressed by the colourful, summary quilts created by generations of African American girls in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. While unconventional for an official nationwide portrait, it showcases Sherald’s signature model of capturing intimate, tender depictions of Black American life.
Since 2018, Sherald has been represented globally by the Hauser & Wirth gallery. Her work is featured in main public collections all over the world, together with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, LACMA, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Tate Gallery within the UK.
With an MFA in portray from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in portray from Clark-Atlanta University, Sherald has earned historic recognition, changing into the primary lady and first African American to win the grand prize within the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. In 2017, Sherald acquired the Anonymous Was A Woman Award, adopted by the Smithsonian Ingenuity Award in 2018. Last yr, she was honored with the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, Harvard University’s highest distinction in African and African American research.
In 2025, she was set to turn into the primary Black up to date artist to obtain a solo exhibition on the National Portrait Gallery. However, Sherald decided to cancel the show after studying her portray Trans Forming Liberty—depicting a Black transgender Statue of Liberty—is perhaps eliminated, resulting from Smithsonian management trying to keep away from President Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding over works his administration deemed “divisive.”
Sherald’s addition to the CAA provides to the company’s rising roster of famend artists, together with Arthur Jafa and Julien Schnabel.
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