Sherald’s work similarly inspired other directors. Tony nominee Lileana Blain-Cruz was most awestruck by Sherald’s rendering of her subjects’ eyes—how they seem to be watching the viewer as much, if not more, than the viewer is watching them.
For actor Gabby Beans, who earned a Tony nomination after starring in Blain-Cruz’s 2022 revival of The Skin of Our Teeth, it’s Sherald’s use of color—vibrant, bold backgrounds juxtaposed against the grayscale skin tones she gives her subjects—that strikes an emotional chord. “The gray…you kind of sit with them longer, because you can’t assume that you know them in a particular way,” she said.
In her remarks to the crowd, Sherald, 51, revealed that she only landed on this signature artistic practice in her late 30s. “I started using grayscale because I had a fear of the work being marginalized,” she said. “I didn’t want the work to be pushed in a corner. I wanted it to exist in a universal way. I wanted it to be able to connect to all people.”
The technique also had personal resonance for Sherald. “I just wanted to make something that looked like where I came from,” she said. “Something that was extraordinary and ordinary at the same time.”
From Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George—based on Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—to August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, which drew inspiration from a Romare Bearden print, art and theater have long been intertwined. “Leonardo da Vinci used to design sets,” said Kail to the audience he helped gather. “There was overlap. There was cross-pollination. We’re better in this institution, in this city, to maybe see if something could grow from that.”
Especially at this particular moment. Last month, according to The New York Times, Sherald withdrew her solo show from its planned transfer to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, after she was told that the museum had considered removing one painting—Trans Forming Liberty, which depicts Black transgender artist Arewà Basit as the Statue of Liberty—in order to avoid provoking President Donald Trump. (“The Trans Forming Liberty painting, which sought to reinterpret one of our nation’s most sacred symbols through a divisive and ideological lens, fundamentally strayed from the mission and spirit of our national museums,” Lindsey Halligan, a special assistant to the president, said in a statement at the time. “The Statue of Liberty is not an abstract canvas for political expression—it is a revered and solemn symbol of freedom, inspiration, and national unity that defines the American spirit.”)
Trans Forming Liberty hangs on its own wall at The Whitney, and will remain there until Sherald’s solo show concludes on Sunday, August 10. “While institutions erase, we archive,” said Sherald. “While laws restrict, we insist on being seen. While history is rewritten, I try to write it back with my brushstrokes.”
As the sun set on The Whitney, many guests opted to stick around and process what they had just witnessed. And while it’s impossible to know where the next great piece of American theater might come from, perhaps its spark began tonight. “It could be right in this room,” said Davis.
