Artist Amy Sherald made headlines in 2018 when her official portrait of then-first lady Michelle Obama was unveiled at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

She made headlines again this summer when she canceled a showing of her "American Sublime" career retrospective at the same gallery. The painter, 52, said she was concerned that museum officials, already under pressure from the Trump administration, might censor a painting of a transgender person posing as the Statue of Liberty. The museum said it had wanted to display the painting alongside a video they said would "contextualize the piece."

"Any kind of contextualization around the work would have been unacceptable, and it would've deviated from how the work was originally conceived," Sherald said. "And because of that, I f

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