In August, American realist portraitist Amy Sherald and correspondent Anderson Cooper were wrapping up a tour of the artist's retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City when they arrived at what she called the "pinnacle" of the show.

"Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons)" is three massive paintings with curved canvases on top, each featuring a Black person in brightly-colored clothing gazing out from a watchtower.

The watchtowers appear to float in a bright blue sky, with no clues for the viewer as to where they are or what they are facing on the horizon.

Pointing to a woman in one of the paintings, Cooper asked, "Do you have a fully-formed idea of what she is looking for? Or what she's looking for on the horizon?"

"I don't. And I'm OK with that. It's a deeply

See Full Page