{"id":18465,"date":"2026-07-27T04:18:50","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18465"},"modified":"2026-07-27T04:18:50","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:18:50","slug":"amy-sherald-on-ecclesia-her-most-ambitious-work-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18465","title":{"rendered":"Amy Sherald on &#8220;Ecclesia,&#8221; her most ambitious work yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>Last summer, American realist portraitist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/amy-sherald-on-portraiture-and-impact-of-michelle-obama-painting-60-minutes-transcript\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\">Amy Sherald<\/a> and correspondent Anderson Cooper were wrapping up a tour of the artist&#8217;s retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City when they arrived at what she called the &#8220;pinnacle&#8221; of the show.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)&#8221; is three massive paintings with curved canvases on top, each featuring a Black person in brightly-colored clothing gazing out from a watchtower.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The watchtowers appear to float in a bright blue sky, with no clues for the viewer as to where they are or what they are facing on the horizon.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Pointing to a woman in one of the paintings, Cooper asked, &#8220;Do you have a fully-formed idea of what she is looking for? Or what she&#8217;s looking for on the horizon?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t. And I&#8217;m OK with that. It&#8217;s a deeply spiritual moment. I think she&#8217;s looking towards the future,&#8221; Sherald said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I still ask myself, like, &#8216;Are they on land or are they over water?&#8217; I don&#8217;t know, you know? I like not having the answer to those questions\u2026 it&#8217;s just a mystery, you know?<\/p>\n<figure class=\"embed embed--type-image is-image embed--float-none embed--size-medium\">\n<p>      <span class=\"img embed__content \"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/10\/19\/70b7c56e-1c67-4212-a708-bb4e3505f58b\/thumbnail\/620x349\/f6887532ebdf16fb4448d85f73ec60c5\/ot-amy-sherald-article-image.jpg#\" alt=\"Ecclesia \" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" class=\" lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/10\/19\/70b7c56e-1c67-4212-a708-bb4e3505f58b\/thumbnail\/620x349\/f6887532ebdf16fb4448d85f73ec60c5\/ot-amy-sherald-article-image.jpg 1x, https:\/\/assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/10\/19\/70b7c56e-1c67-4212-a708-bb4e3505f58b\/thumbnail\/1240x698\/2df00b199e691546d96e35ce0e2d43c9\/ot-amy-sherald-article-image.jpg 2x\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/span><figcaption class=\"embed__caption-container\">\n<p>                  <span class=\"embed__caption\">&#8220;Ecclesia&#8221; on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art for Amy Sherald&#8217;s retrospective &#8220;Amy Sherald: American Sublime.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&#8220;Ecclesia&#8221; is a triptych, three paintings that form one cohesive artwork. Triptychs were originally commissioned in the Middle Ages to hang behind an altar in a church.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Sherald said she was inspired by a trip to the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, where some of the most well-known examples in art history reside.<\/p>\n<p>But she also found inspiration in the work of one of her favorite filmmakers: Wes Anderson.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The stand was inspired by Wes Anderson, his movie &#8216;The Grand Budapest Hotel,'&#8221; she explained to Cooper.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The bellboy and another character [are] on the run, and they end up in the middle of a snowy field. And in the middle of that snowy field is a random telephone booth\u2026 and I just remember freezing that frame and thinking, &#8216;This is something.'&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The paintings are massive in size, and Sherald required scaffolding to reach every corner of the canvas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It took Sherald some time to adjust to working on a larger canvas; &#8220;Ecclesia&#8221; and other recent paintings of hers are much larger than previous work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I would be up on the scaffold\u2026 working on a face, and it would look so good. And then I would step back and I would be like, &#8216;I can&#8217;t see anything that I did.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, I had to paint with bigger brushes, which was different for me.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She told Cooper that the three paintings that form &#8220;Ecclesia&#8221; took half a year to complete.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[It&#8217;s] the exclamation point of this exhibition,&#8221; she told Cooper.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like the pinnacle for me. This is the last piece that I finished, and I&#8217;m hoping that it&#8217;s pointing me towards a direction that I will go in the future.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sherald said the retrospective show at the Whitney was &#8220;emptying the Rolodex [of everything] in my mind for probably 20 years,&#8221; and that, at 52 years old, she was &#8220;starting over.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is it exciting? Or is it terrifying?&#8221; Cooper asked.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s both,&#8221; Sherald said with a smile.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know who I am. And I know that I essentially don&#8217;t make ugly paintings. So, I think I&#8217;m gonna be OK.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>The video above was originally published on October 19, 2025. It was\u00a0 produced by Will Croxton and was edited by Patrick Lee.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo from Matthew Millman Photography\/SFMOMA.<\/em><\/p>\n<section class=\"content__body--footer\">\n<\/section>\n<p>  <!-- data-recirc-source=\"queryly\" --><\/p>\n<aside class=\"component list recirculation component--type-recirculation  \">\n<p><h3 class=\"component__title\">More from CBS News<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"component__item-recirc-block\">\n<p><h3 class=\"component__title\">Go deeper with The Free Press<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<section class=\"content__body--footer\">\n      <!-- tags --><br \/>\n    <\/section>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last summer, American realist portraitist Amy Sherald and correspondent Anderson Cooper were wrapping up a tour of the artist&#8217;s retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City when they arrived at what she called the &#8220;pinnacle&#8221; of the show.\u00a0 &#8220;Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)&#8221; is three massive paintings with curved canvases on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets2.cbsnewsstatic.com\/hub\/i\/r\/2025\/10\/19\/dfe7f91d-6834-4153-9319-77fe807bf65d\/thumbnail\/1200x630\/53d1030b2290752668db2eab446bef94\/ot-amy-sherald-fd.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-hub"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}