Amy Sherald: American Sublime Conversation
May 13, 2026 | 7–8 p.m.
Location: High Museum of Art, Hill Auditorium
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.
Not a member? Join today!
Join us to hear celebrated artist and Georgia native, Amy Sherald and filmmaker and writer, RaMell Ross in conversation around their respective contributions to the art world, their shared inspiration in film and photography, and their approaches to storytelling about the African American experience. This conversation will be moderated by Angelica Arbelaez, the High Museum of Art’s Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
Amy Sherald
Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1973, Sherald trained as a painter in Atlanta and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Clark Atlanta University. Following her participation in the Spelman College International Artist-in-Residence program in Portobelo, Panama, she went on to receive a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Sherald is widely acclaimed for her distinctive and conceptually rich portraits of African American subjects. In 2017, she was commissioned to paint former First Lady Michelle Obama’s official portrait for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. That next year, she was named the 2018 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize in African American Art and Art History by the High Museum of Art.
Amy Sherald: American Sublime will be on view from May 15 through September 27, 2026, and will feature more than 35 paintings created between 2007 and 2024
RaMell Ross
RaMell Ross is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and self-described “liberated documentarian.” He has received numerous honors, including an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, and a 2022 Solomon Fellowship at Harvard University.
His feature-length experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and received a Peabody Award in 2020. The film was also nominated for an Academy Award at the 91st Academy Awards and for an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
Ross’s work has been included in numerous public and private collections, including A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845, which was exhibited at the High Museum of Art from September 2023 to January 2024.
Angelica Arbelaez
Angelica Arbelaez is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the High Museum of Art. Arbelaez contributes to the development of the museum’s modern and contemporary art department, supports collection growth through targeted acquisitions, expands the exhibition program, and collaborates on new scholarship and public programming initiatives. She also works to strengthen and create new relationships with patrons and community stakeholders.
Prior to joining the High, Arbelaez served as the Rubio Butterfield Family Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She cocurated the solo exhibition Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions (2023) and assisted with the planning and research for the group exhibitions Shifting Landscapes (2024–2026) and no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria (2022–2023). She also contributed to the Whitney’s collection strategic plan and was a founding member of the museum’s Latinx Art, Artists, and Audiences Working Group, which focuses on creating inclusive experiences for Spanish-speaking audiences.
Related Events
Join Alison Saar, the 2025 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize, and Anni Pullagura, PhD, the Margaret and Terry Stent Associate Curator of American Art, in conversation around Saar’s contributions to the field of African American art and her exploration into the histories of the African diaspora and its artistic traditions.
Celebrate Membership May and enjoy an evening at the High welcoming the opening of Amy Sherald: American Sublime. 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.
Join us as we explore Amy Sherald’s largest exhibition of work to date in her mid-career retrospective at the High.