Artists

Kehinde Wiley is an American painter and visual artist celebrated for his portraits that place Black and brown men and women in the grand tradition of Old Master painting. Drawing on the visual rhetoric of power, wealth, and prestige, Wiley reimagines art-historical compositions—by artists such as Titian, Ingres, Gainsborough, and others—by inserting contemporary subjects he has encountered around the world. The result is a striking fusion of past and present that both challenges and reorients the canon, elevating his sitters into the realm of the heroic and sublime.

Originally photographing young men he met on the streets of Harlem, Wiley has since expanded his practice globally, culminating in his ongoing series The World Stage, which features models from cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Dakar, and Lagos. His portraits, often monumental in scale, are marked by luminous color, intricate patterning, and a disarming juxtaposition between historical formality and contemporary style. In 2012, his practice broadened to include depictions of women with An Economy of Grace, a series later chronicled in an award-winning documentary.

In 2018, Wiley became the first African American artist to paint an official U.S. presidential portrait when former President Barack Obama selected him for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The following year he founded Black Rock Senegal, a multidisciplinary artist residency program in Dakar that fosters cross-cultural exchange. His recent body of work, An Archaeology of Silence (2022–23), powerfully confronts systemic violence against Black bodies through large-scale portraits that reframe traditional iconography of the fallen figure, martyr, and hero.

Wiley holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and an MFA from Yale University, and has received honorary doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design and San Francisco Art Institute. His many honors include the U.S. Department of State’s Medal of Arts, Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, and France’s distinction of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

His work is held in the collections of over 50 major museums worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).