Before the Amy Sherald: American Sublime exhibit opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art in November, Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen typically served 150 to 170 meals at lunchtime on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, according to chef and owner John Shields. But over the five months that the exhibi t was on view at the BMA, Shields said, the number of lunchtime meals on weekdays rose to more than 300. Before American Sublime arrived at the BMA, he said, Gertrude’s Sunday brunch drew about 300 diners. After the show opened, the number shot up to 450. And on Thursdays, when the museum stays open until 9 p.m. and admission to the Amy Sherald exhibit was free, the restaurant’s “Thursdays with Gertie” nights were mobbed. “Thursday night turned into an insane asylum,” Shields said. The sharp rise in business at Gertrude’s, the museum’s in-house restaurant, is an example of the economic impact the traveling Amy Sherald exhibit had when it was on view in Baltimore, starting on Nov. 2, 2025, and ending last Sunday, April 5, 2026. On Wednesday, BMA officials announced that Amy Sherald: American Sublime set a new attendance record for the museum in the 21st century, drawing 84,000 visitors over the course of its run.   Before American Sublime, the BMA’s most-attended shows since 2000 were the Matisse/Diebenkorn exhibit in 2016 and 2017, which had about 45,700 visitors, and The Culture: Hip Hop Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, with about 30,000 visitors in 2023. Attendance was tallied differently at BMA exhibits before 2000, and several were higher. Gertrude’s has been the in-house restaurant at the BMA for the past 28 years. Located on the first floor of the museum’s East Wing, next to the gift shop, it’s open Wednesday through Sunday, with indoor seating for 100 diners and outdoor seating for another 60 on the terrace overlooking the museum’s sculpture gardens. As the restaurant’s owner, Shields has seen first-hand what effect Sherald’s American Sublime exhibit had on both the museum and on his restaurant business, which is a tenant of the museum. Shields noted that Sherald has a direct connection to Gertrude’s because she worked there as a waitress when she was attending graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In addition, the subject of one of her paintings in the exhibit is another former waiter that she met while working at Gertrude’s. In his 28 years at the BMA, Shields said, he’s never seen the museum, or his restaurant, so busy. “It’s been an extraordinary time for us,” he said. “I’ll never forget this time, I’m sure.” On the last day of the exhibit, shortly after it closed at 5 p.m., Shields paused to answer questions about the show’s impact on the museum and his business. While he spoke, every table in the restaurant was filled. This interview has been edited. Every table was full at Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, the BMA’s in-house restaurant, on the last day of the “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” exhibit Sunday, April 5, 2026. Photo credit: Ed Gunts. Baltimore Fishbowl: How would you describe the impact of the Amy Sherald exhibit on the BMA and Gertrude’s? John Shields: It’s been seismic. I mean, there’s never been anything like this at the museum, ever. Obviously, we know that the attendance records broke every barrier that we’ve had here. I’ve been here for 28 years, at Gertrude’s, and again, there’s never been an exhibit that has had this much impact on both the BMA and, obviously, Gertrude’s. It over-doubled our business in these past five months. Q: The BMA wasn’t originally supposed to be a venue for the American Sublime exhibit. It was scheduled to come to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D. C., from Sept. 19, 2025, to Feb. 22, 2026, after stops at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. But Sherald cancelled the Washington stop in July due to concerns about censorship and museum officials announced in early September that she would bring it to the BMA instead, starting in early November. How prepared were you for that? A: We along with the BMA had very little notice about this exhibit coming here. It was not planned to come here. So usually we have about two years to get everything ready for something coming — they do, we do. Infrastructure-wise, planning-wise, we had two months to get ready to accommodate the number of anticipated guests that would be coming. We had to put ads out. We had to add a lot of front-of-the-house staff. We had to bulk up the kitchen staff. We had to get new equipment. Q: Did you think attendance was going to be as high as it was? A: We had anticipated it was going to be huge. We didn’t know how huge it was going to be. Then when it hit, it hit like a ton of bricks. And then you think, well, this is amazing, and it’ll probably slow down by January because it’s the winter and it kind of calms down. So I thought it would be up and down. Not so. Packed. Every day for five months. Q: How did your numbers change? A: We do a pretty good lunch business here. It’s about 150, 160, 170 during kind-of-normal times. But we were doing over 300 to 350 just during Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. We’ll do somewhere around 300 for a Sunday brunch, normally. We’ve been doing 450. So it’s been pretty big. Q: What about Thursday nights, when the museum stays open later than usual? A: On Thursday nights, the museum is open until 9 o’clock. They also made it free to see Amy that night. You had to have an advance time [ticket] booked, but it was free that night. We do a thing called ‘Thursdays with Gertie,’ which is a reduced-priced menu to help support the museum being open late – not including Amy but normally. So anyway, Thursday night turned into an insane asylum. So many people coming to be here at night. The gift shop’s open. We’re open. So that has been wild as well. Q: How has the staff handled it? A: From a business standpoint, it has just been phenomenal, something like I’ve never seen. It’s been a very, very exciting time for the whole staff. They’re also at this point exhausted because they’ve been going full speed ahead for five months. Q: How many employees do you have? A: We have about 52, 55 people who work here. [Before the American Sublime show] it was somewhere around 45. Q: Did you at least get any breaks as a result of the inclement weather this winter? A: We didn’t get much of a breather this time, because the museum was much more aggressive about staying open. Usually, if weather is even kind of bad; ‘Oh well, let’s close.’ But they had so many advance tickets sold for Amy, the weather could be a little funky and they just pushed through and so did we. So we didn’t get much rest. Q: How many days were you closed? A: One or two. A lot of it hit over the weekend on some of those [storms], so by the time Wednesday came around, we were able to dig out and go again. Q: Do you think the museum responded sufficiently to the high demand for tickets? A: They did. They had to kind of slowly work that up because they weren’t quite sure [how many tickets they could offer without making the galleries feel crowded]. I don’t think they’ve ever had anything like this so they eventually started putting more people in. I was a little concerned initially because I didn’t think they were putting in enough per half hour, and it affects us by how that works. So they did up that half hour kind of thing. One of the things they did not advertise was a soft close. [The BMA website] says that the museum closes at five, but they kept it open until six. It was very quiet, but they sold tickets and people came so we did have extra hours. Q: And it was all done with much less time than usual for planning. A: I think the way that they did it in two months and the way they were able to pivot and to put that exhibit space together was pretty miraculous. They did a great job, they really did. I watched everybody working like crazy to make that happen. Q: How would you say the show was received, based on conversations with your patrons both from out-of-town and local? A: I talk to people all day long. People came from all over the world to see this show, and they stayed in Baltimore and then they told me about their experiences in Baltimore. I didn’t get any negative feedback at all. So again that’s one thing: you have people coming from all over, that either hadn’t been to Baltimore or hadn’t been to the BMA, who say, “Oh my God, this is a wonderful institution, it really is.” But I think the one that’s more important is our people. I know my tribe, from Parkville, where I grew up, came back for this. They hadn’t been back to this museum in maybe 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, five years. People from all around our area who have either never been here or haven’t been here in a long time. They walked through it and they saw the rest of the museum and they go, “My God, I had no idea.” Because most of them, the last time they were here was when the Mummy was still here and that was a long time ago. I was a child. But they were blown away by the museum. So I think that’s going to have some effect. I really do, because the enthusiasm was amazing. Amy Sherald was a vehicle to bring them in, and I really think it is going to have some sort of longer-lasting effect. ...read more read less