*Barack and Michelle Obama paintings from the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will embark on a five-city tour in summer 2021.
Residents in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Atlanta and Houston will have a chance to see in person Kehinde Wiley’s official portrait of President Obama and Amy Sherald’s painting of the first lady, which were unveiled in 2018.
Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote that their works “cheerfully buck the official portrait trend of instantly forgettable painterly pablum.”
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“From the moment of their unveiling at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in February 2018, the museum’s official portraits of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama have become iconic,” the museum said in a press statement.
The portraits will first travel to the couple’s former home, Chicago. Then they will visit Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston, staying in each city for about two months each.
According to the LA Times, the exhibition will run at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from Nov. 5, 2021, to Jan. 2, 2022.
The exhibit will also debut at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the report states.
The national tour will end in May 2022.
“I’m also thinking about all of the young people, particularly girls and girls of color, who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall,” Michelle Obama said at the unveiling ceremony in 2018.
Here’s a full breakdown of the tour via CNN:
