Amy Sherald’s *Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)* (2013). The painting earned Sherald first prize in the 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. Image Frances and Burton Reifler © Amy Sherald. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.

Amy Sherald, the painter behind the official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, has joined Hauser & Wirth, a mega-gallery with worldwide outposts.

The announcement comes days after Sherald unveiled her official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. In May, Sherald will debut her first solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. 2018 has been quite a year for Amy Sherald, who had her first solo gallery show in 2016.

To date, Sherald has rejected the tendency of star artists to overproduce. ArtNews writes that her output is only 30 portraits, 10 to 12 paintings a year. As of December 2017, the waiting list for her paintings had grown to about 50 people.

On a related note, our beloved President Obama had to kiss his wife's official portrait goodbye. The crowds to see former First Lady Michelle Obama's portrait have been so large that the painting has been moved to the 20th-Century Americans galleries on the third level of the National Portrait Gallery.

“We always planned to have the portrait on long-term view, and relocated the work to the third floor sooner than anticipated to provide a more spacious viewing experience due to the high volume of visitors,” a representative of the museum told artnet News in an email. “A fun fact, this work is now off of the Great Hall, which was the home to Lincoln’s second inaugural ball, and was at one time the longest room in America! It was also used as a hospital during the Civil War, where Walt Whitman was one of many who helped nurse soldiers back to life.”

Unadulterated Obama Love

The portraits are so popular that 50,024 visitors passed through the museum doors on President's Weekend -- representing more than a 300 percent increase over the same holiday weekend in 2017.

In a followup to our earlier story about Parker Curry, whose small-girl's astonishment with Mrs. Obama's portrait went viral last month, the two-year-old found herself living her dream, after meeting Mrs. Obama for 45 minutes in her downtown DC offices. .

"Parker, I'm so glad I had the chance to meet you today (and for the dance party)! Keep on dreaming big for yourself...and maybe one day I'll proudly look up at a portrait of you!," Obama wrote on Twitter and Instagram, where she shared a photo and video from their meeting. In the latter, Obama and Parker both showed off their best dance moves to Taylor Swift's 2014 single "Shake It Off."