Talk:First Lady Michelle Obama (painting)

Redirects

• Michelle Obama (Sherald)
• Portrait of Michelle Obama
• Official Portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama

---Another Believer _(Talk) 04:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Reason for this page to exist?

Excuse me for asking, but why exactly was this page deemed necessary. None of the other First Lady of the United States portraits have pages of their own as far as I am aware and it seems as this article is a stub, that not enough information exists about this particular painting for it to warrant its own page. What is the reasoning behind the page's existence?--Brboyle (talk) 20:47, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

See my response at Talk:President Barack Obama (painting). ɱ (talk) 23:20, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

List of sources for this article

Below is a list of links that I've gathered from a Google Alert on Amy Sherald, most of which seem to be about this painting. We can use these to expand and improve the article. I'm not familiar with all these sources, so we should make sure they are reliable. Please check them off by placing a {{done}} template before each of them that you've gone through! -- Cloud atlas (talk) 05:25, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-peek-into-the-process-behind-the-popular-obama-portraits/2020/01/29/341e105a-3d5b-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html
• https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-obama-portraits-international-art-destination
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/arts/design/beautiful-project-metropolitan-museum.html
• https://www.michiganradio.org/post/two-detroit-artists-how-they-use-painting-photography-capture-complexity-black-life
•  Done https://www.cnn.com/style/article/obama-portraits-kim-sajet-smithsonian/index.html
• https://www.culturetype.com/2020/02/21/national-portrait-gallery-african-americans-and-racial-justice-are-popular-subjects-at-outwin-boochever-portrait-competition/
•  Done https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/museums/ct-amy-sherald-michelle-obama-portrait-explained-0220-20200219-bnf4267cyrekrdbtkomybuh4dy-story.html
• https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-audacity-of-art/Content?oid=77893218
• https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/arts/design/showwall-arthur-lewis.html
• https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-emerging-black-artists-future-figurative-painting
• https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/47804/1/art-shows-to-leave-the-house-for-this-month-los-angeles-february-2020
•  Done https://www.npr.org/2020/02/07/802778807/obamas-portraits-going-on-tour-next-year
• https://ew.com/books/obama-portraits-exclusive-images/
• https://www.laweekly.com/meet-an-artist-monday-shizu-saldamando/

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 23:03, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

(

• Comment or view
• Article history

)

A Gee’s Bend quilter at work

• ... that in painting Michelle Obama’s official portrait, Amy Sherald was inspired by the Gee's Bend tradition of "composing quilts in geometries that transform clothes and fabric remnants into masterpieces" (pictured)? (Source: Sherald quoted: "Milly’s design also resembles the inspired quilt masterpieces made by the women of Gee’s Bend, a small remote black community in Alabama, where they compose quilts in geometries that transform clothes and fabric remnants into masterpieces." WashPost)
  • ALT1:... that in painting Michelle Obama’s official portrait, Amy Sherald thought of “the inspired quilt masterpieces made by the women of Gee’s Bend” (pictured)? Source: "Sherald quoted: "Milly’s design also resembles the inspired quilt masterpieces made by the women of Gee’s Bend, a small remote black community in Alabama, where they compose quilts in geometries that transform clothes and fabric remnants into masterpieces."

• Reviewed: Children’s Crusade (Britten)
• Comment: I prefer the first hook but it’s 214 characters, so I’d welcome suggestions for trimming. In any case it may be best to hold this nomination for a bit given I recently nominated a related topic.

5x expanded by Innisfree987 (talk). Self-nominated at 18:10, 14 November 2020 (UTC).

• Drat, I accidentally marked as new when it is actually 5x expanded, and now I’m not sure how to correct. Apologies! Innisfree987 (talk) 18:14, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

• Easy fix. Good luck with this. — Maile (talk) 01:22, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you Maile66! Innisfree987 (talk) 01:49, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

• Over-5x expansion from 1372B to 9093B verified. QPQ done. Earwig unavailable but spot-checking found no copyvio. A single sentence, "The portrait is a large oil painting on linen, standing six feet tall and five feet wide.", is unsourced. I prefer the original hook to ALT1 but it is too long; may I suggest that you shorten it by summarizing and paraphrasing the quote rather than including it as a direct quote? The missing source needs to be added but that should be easy. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:54, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
  • PS I should have noted this explicitly but the image looks ok at thumbnail size and appears properly licensed. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:11, 17 November 2020 (UTC)
    • David Eppstein, thank you for this review and for catching the unreferenced sentence—it got lost when I trimmed the same info out of a quoted source, for concision. I’ve restored the ref.

The hook is on hold for a moment because a question has emerged in a different entry about whether “official portrait” is accurate—it’s what the majority of sources use but an editor points out that there could be more than one official portrait. We’re discussing at Errors if you have an opinion. I will update accordingly soon—that discussion has to be resolved by this time tomorrow. Innisfree987 (talk) 00:34, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

• Hello again! To be on the safe side, maybe we could use the painting’s title (and an abbreviated quote)?

• ALT3: ... that in painting First Lady Michelle Obama, Amy Sherald was inspired by the geometric quilts of Gee’s Bend that “transform clothes and fabric remnants into masterpieces” (pictured)?

Or, an entirely paraphrased version:

• ALT4: ... that in painting First Lady Michelle Obama, Amy Sherald was inspired by the way the quilters of Gee’s Bend make clothing and fabric scraps into geometric works of art (pictured)?

I agree it would be preferable to paraphrase, just tripping over how to avoid suggesting they make clothes (!) without reusing Sherald’s word, “transform”... Do you think either of the above sound ok—or have a better thought? “... take clothing and fabric scraps and make geometric works of art”? “... use clothing and fabric scraps to make geometric works of art”? Innisfree987 (talk) 04:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Missing citation fixed, and officialness issue resolved with the new hooks, so good to go. Both ALT3 or ALT4 are within rules, modulo the minor issue that ALT3 should use straight quotes. (What happened to ALT2?) My personal preference would be for ALT4, both because I think "geometric" is an important word to retain in the hook, and because the "masterpieces" in the quote in ALT3 is (as WP:PEACOCK warns against) too vague in what it is praising these works for. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:15, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree about PEACOCK, ALT4 it is then—I’ll strike the rest (ALT2 was lost to my counting error, I’m afraid!) Thank you again for your review and all your input. Innisfree987 (talk) 04:02, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• National Portrait Gallery visitors view First Lady Michelle Obama.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 15:18, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Closed as keep. Innisfree987 (talk) 16:57, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Separate article for Parker Looks Up

^^^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sagquattro2009 (talk • contribs) 16:13, 11 February 2021 (UTC)