The portraits of President and Michelle Obama were unveiled yesterday.  This morning I was terrifically excited to get invited to the media preview of the portraits hung in the galleries.
The portraits are huge and visually arresting. Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle is an abstraction which has a haunting strength. Kehinde Wiley’s portrait of Obama is endlessly fascinating, with the back and forth play between him and the vegetation. There’s a lot of charm in the portrait, but lots of layers of meaning and solumn depths.