Like most things that are real and authentic, Baltimore is complicated. It’s up and down, bleak and bright, historically rebellious. But it always chooses to settle on the upward, bright fight, unfettered by outsiders who think they can define us. Nope.
Our city will shine a beam of realistic positivity on even its most questionable corners, because that’s how we move forward — in earth-based joy that sometimes projects to the heavens. Which is why Amy Sherald’s “American Sublime,” appearing until April 5 at the Baltimore Museum of Art, is the most Baltimore thing you could imagine. And you should definitely try to snag a ticket.
Not only did Sherald find Baltimore models for many of the 38 portraits seen in the show and paint them here, but the show’s presence in this city is an act of rebellion, of political savvy in the face of bigotry and censorship. It’s the kind of truth that we do here, organically, undeterred and in your face.
We are like that sometimes. OK ... all of the time.
“I texted her immediately and said, ‘If I have to move mountains to make this show happen at the BMA, I will,’” Asma Naeem, the museum’s director, told me about Sherald’s decision to pull “American Sublime” from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. There were concerns that she’d have to pull a stunning piece called “Trans Forming Liberty,” re-imagining the Statue of Liberty as a pink-wigged transwoman.
Naeem knew the city needed this show by the woman she called “my Baltimore sister,” and she made it happen. She was right about the show. If I had my way — and I don’t — “American Sublime” and its depiction of ordinary miracle of Black American magic, writ large with a dash of chicken box and half and half, would exist at the BMA forever.
It can’t — due in Atlanta in May — but attendees seem to agree. The show is, to date, the museum’s best-attended exhibit in at least the last 26 years. As of Jan. 20, visitors, hailing from 35 states, including California, New Mexico and Colorado, have numbered more than 55,000, overshooting a predicted 40,000. At this rate, the total count is expected to be around 70,000 by the end of its April run.
The day I visited the exhibit, the gallery was packed, as it apparently usually is. I walked behind a group of students from the Park School, as they stopped to consider each portrait and the human being captured there. And as is common with Sherald’s paintings, they saw themselves.
Zora Cover, an 18-year-old senior, told me her dream is to be a curator herself one day. She noted that Sherald had once been a server at Gertrude’s, the restaurant on the museum’s first floor, and now here, Zora, who wants to be a curator, was looking at her art.
“It means a lot that it came here,” she said. “Baltimore has a thriving art scene, and to have a world-renowned artist from here celebrates Black excellence.”
We were standing in front of “They Call Me Redbone, But I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake,” one of the paintings that Sherald created in Baltimore. That makes sense that I was drawn to it, because I think I saw some of our homegrown defiance in the image of a young woman in pigtails and a bright yellow, berry-covered dress. She was looking at us, head cocked, like she was amused by being admired, but not surprised. Why shouldn’t you admire her? She deserves it.
That’s a very Baltimore attitude, but one that would be more recognizable to people because it skews urban. But the other side of the gallery is also authentically local. It’s called “A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt),” and its subject, Denzel Mitchell Jr. of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore, is perched high on a John Deere tractor, the blue of his overalls set against blue sky and green grass. That Mitchell is posed on a symbol of Americana, a thing that Black Americans are not usually associated with, speaks to our diversity, deep connection to the roots of this land and just how we can adapt to pretty much anything. We’ve had to.
Sherald’s mission, after all, is presenting “Black individuality as essential Americanness,” Naeem said. And in that is a mirror that those of us in Baltimore and Maryland can take for granted. We know that the Black community comprises all walks of life — farmers and first ladies. A dandily dressed man holding a rabbit in a hat. A boy holding a fish. We are many things. And it’s nice to have it on display.
“This makes us look really extraordinary and seen. And we are never seen,” said Shelia Clark, who drove from Bowie for the show. “She allows us to be seen.”
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Zora Cover’s name.
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