Michelle Obama’s Smithsonian portrait was recently moved to another location in the museum because it is so popular there were space concerns around seeing it.
The portrait was installed last month and was moved to the third floor in the 20th-Century Americans galleries to give viewers “a more spacious viewing experience,” the museum said in a tweet.
The portrait was painted by Amy Sherald and features the former first lady in a seated pose with a long, geometric-patterned dress. Sherald’s artwork often features social justice themes and she paints black skin tones in gray to de-emphasize their “color.”
Sherald is quoted by the Smithsonian as saying Obama is someone “any woman can relate to — no matter what shape, size, race or color. We see our best selves in her.”
Barack Obama thanked Sherald when the portrait was unveiled for “so spectacularly capturing the grace and beauty and intelligence and charm and hotness of the woman that I love.”
There were 176,000 visitors to the museum last month as the portraits of the Obamas were unveiled, making it the gallery’s busiest month in the last three years.
Two-year-old Parker Curry went viral on social media earlier in March in a photograph where she stared transfixed at the portrait, and told her mother she thought the former first lady was a queen.
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