June 18, 2021
The Obama Portraits Hit the Road
In 2021 the celebrated portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama began a national tour, drawing record crowds across the United States.
When Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Barack Obama — seated amid lush foliage — and Amy Sherald's serene image of Michelle Obama were unveiled in 2018, they became instant sensations, transforming Washington's National Portrait Gallery into a place of pilgrimage.
In 2021 the two paintings set off on a national tour, drawing huge, diverse crowds in cities across the country, many visitors moved to see Black sitters and Black artists at the centre of America's official portrait tradition.
Vibrant, dignified and quietly radical, the portraits redefined what a presidential likeness could look like — and who it could speak to.
Image: “Martha McDonald, Hospital Hymn - Elegy for Lost Soldiers, 2015, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery” — Martha McDonald and Ryan Collerd, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.