FEAST YOUR EYES

Coming Soon to a Museum Near You... the Obama Portraits

After breaking visitor records at the National Portrait Galley, the paintings will be shown in Chicago, New York, L.A., Atlanta and Houston.

Some 4 million people have visited the portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, but that number is about to get a lot a lot bigger. Starting in June 2021, the paintings by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald will be exhibited in five museums across the country. The first stop is the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. The portraits will be in display in each city for about two months before returning to the Smithsonian, where they set attendance records—with about 30,000 people visiting them after they were unveiled.