Everywhere you turn, their gazes lock eyes with the viewer — a Baltimore farmer atop a tractor, a former first lady, a legless boxer in the corner of a ring.

The 38 painted portraits of Black Americans comprise “American Sublime,” the exhibit by former Baltimore-based artist Amy Sherald that opens at the Baltimore Museum of Art on Sunday.

Response to the news of “American Sublime” coming to Charm City has been outsized, to say the least, said Asma Naeem, the Baltimore Museum of Art’s director. She’s never seen anything like it.

“There’s just been an overwhelmingly ebullient response from not just our devoted patrons and members and the art community at large, even beyond Baltimore, but even those who are not necessarily art lovers here in Baltimore,” Naeem told The Banner. “It’s been really wonderful to see that kind of breakthrough into new audience members who want to come see this show.”

Numbers provided by the BMA reflect the anticipation: The paid exhibit in the usually free museum sold more than 4,900 tickets in the first week of sales, while the museum also saw a huge boost in membership — 262 new members joined the BMA in the month following the “American Sublime” announcement. In the same period last year, the museum had 22 new members. Membership renewals also more than doubled year-over-year.

On Wednesday morning, Naeem described Sherald, who rose to international prominence after painting Michelle Obama’s portrait in 2018 while living in Baltimore, as “one of the most important painters in the world today.”

“American Sublime,” located in the Contemporary Wing of the BMA’s second floor, was never intended to come to Baltimore. But a whirlwind three months changed everything — while making Sherald one of the most discussed American artists of the year.

In July, the painter pulled the mid-career retrospective, scheduled to run at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., over potential censorship concerns related to “Trans Forming Liberty,” her portrait of trans model Arewà Basit as the Statue of Liberty. Weeks later, The New Yorker used the image on its cover.

As the art world wondered which city would follow San Francisco and New York in hosting “American Sublime,” the BMA secured the homecoming of an artist who earned her MFA in painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Not to mention that Sherald — who lived and worked in Baltimore from 2001 to 2018 — was once a hostess at Gertrude’s, the museum’s restaurant.

Upon entering “American Sublime,” visitors are greeted by one of Sherald’s newer works, 2024’s “Ecclesia (The Meeting of Inheritance and Horizons),” a serene triptych of three Black figures in the sky. The survey also features Sherald’s most famous works, including the Obama portrait, “Trans Forming Liberty,” and a stately painting of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black woman from Kentucky who was killed by police.

Seeing Sherald’s paintings reveals fascinating micro-details — reminders that screens will never capture the magic of witnessing art in person: the sleekness of a shiny silver playground slide, the worn guts of a John Deere tractor, a bouquet of marigolds. These paintings, some of which tower over the viewer, are deeply pleasurable artworks in which to simply stare.

The Columbus, Georgia-born Sherald, who declined an interview request, created roughly half of the paintings in “American Sublime” in Baltimore, Naeem said. Many of the subjects are Baltimore people.

The BMA’s announcement came in early September, giving its staff just weeks to quickly prepare and produce the exhibit.

“We’ve been joking that it normally takes us two years to do what we’ve been doing in two months,” said Elisabeth Callihan, the BMA’s chief education officer.

Sherald recently told Anderson Cooper — who loaned his own 2019 Sherald painting, “Handsome,” to the BMA — why she pulled the show from the National Portrait Gallery amid increased scrutiny from the Trump administration over “woke” art.

“There were conversations about the work being censored. The show is ‘American Sublime.’ It was a whole narrative and a trans woman is a part of that narrative for me,” Sherald, 52, told “60 Minutes.” “Any kind of contextualization around the work would have been unacceptable.”