Amy Sherald, artist, in conversation with Erin Christovale, assistant curator at the Hammer Museum. Amy Sherald (b. Columbus, Georgia, 1973) received her BFA from Clark Atlanta University in 1997 and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. Sherald paints dynamic portraits designed to divulge an erudite understanding of the psychological consequences of stereotyping and racism. Each portrait depicts a friend or acquaintance suspended in vivid fashions before a nondescript background; skin tones are represented using grayscale as a way of challenging the concept of color-as-race. Sherald is critical of African American cultural history and the representation of black bodies, and her portraits are satirical manifestations of identities shaped by political, social, economic, and cultural influences. In 2016, Sherald was the first woman to win the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition grand prize from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today was on view at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery from March 12, 2016, to January 8, 2017.