In 2023, the Stanley Museum of Art acquired Amy Sherald’s “Hope is the Thing with Feathers (The Little Bird),” a color screen print after her 2020 painting of the same name.
The print shares its title and symbolism with an 1891 Emily Dickinson poem and portrays a member of New York City’s Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater whose smock is patterned with a soaring bird. Sherald was the first woman and Black person to win the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Her artwork examines the intricacies of public Blackness in the United States.
Caption: Amy Sherald (American, 1973-), “Hope is the thing with feathers (The little bird),” 2021. Color screen print. Acquired with support from the Craig A. Subler and Mary Jo Arnoldi Contemporary Print Fund. 2022.117
