"Amy Sherald: American Sublime" marks the artist's first mid-career survey, offering an extensive exploration of her work from 2007 to the present. The exhibition is organized thematically, with each gallery presenting a crucial idea in her work and explaining her detailed approach to making paintings. Highlights include her celebrated portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor and new works debuting for the first time. Sherald's art invites viewers to engage with themes of identity, representation, and the nuanced experiences of Black Americans, positioning her within the lineage of great American artists who redefine cultural narratives.

Tau Lewis’s works channel ancestral memory and advocate for collective healing through labor-intensive artistry. Her sculptural practice weaves together recycled textiles, quilted and dyed fabrics, leather, and found objects to create immersive, layered forms steeped in ancestral resonance and environmental consciousness. Each piece—such as Opus (The Ovule) from the imagined world of T.A.U.B.I.S—fuses the human, botanical, and spiritual within richly textured, gender-fluid structures. Through her meticulous craftsmanship, Lewis channels African diasporic practices of material reuse while envisioning utopian futures of love, healing, and justice. Her installations evoke lineages of Black storytellers and cultural makers, animating space with embodied narratives that transcend traditional sculpture.

“I Dream a World” brings together seminal works such as Looking for Langston (1989), Baltimore (2003), Ten Thousand Waves (2010), and Lessons of the Hour (2019), among others. These films address complex topics such as Black and queer identity, African diaspora, colonial legacies, and the restitution of African cultural heritage. Through lush imagery, poetic storytelling, and experimental structure, Julien invites viewers to become active participants in his visual explorations. The exhibition is curated by Claudia Schmuckli, who has reimagined the gallery space to accommodate the artist’s distinct multimedia approach, including acoustically-insulated screening rooms for deeper engagement.

Beauty Plus features photographs by Jasmine Ross, an Oakland-based multimedia artist whose practice centers identity politics, intergenerational memory, and fictive kinship. Working primarily with large-format cameras, Ross documents the closure of a 31-year-old Black-owned beauty supply store in New Haven, Connecticut, using photography to honor the store’s owner and the community that gathered there. Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. March 18, 2026 — Runs through May 31, 2026. Over three months, Ross photographed the store’s final days with a 4 x 5 film camera, building a portrait of small business ownership, communal care, and Black survival. The exhibition also considers the contradictions within Black beauty economies: these spaces can offer affirmation, access, and cultural continuity while also revealing how Black identity is shaped, marketed, and monetized through products often owned by outsiders. The project positions the beauty supply store as both a social space and a site of cultural tension, where intimacy, dependency, and self-fashioning intersect. Through analog photography’s deliberate pace, Ross gives sustained attention to a place and community in transition.