Trump Administration Considers Selling Kehinde Wiley Painting Removed from U.S. Embassy
The Trump administration is weighing the sale of a Kehinde Wiley painting that the U.S. State Department recently removed from a U.S. embassy, according to ARTnews.
The painting depicts Dominican subjects and had been installed at the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic. The State Department took it down from the embassy walls, the New York Times reported on 24 August 2026. ARTnews, publishing the following day, reported that officials are now exploring whether to sell the work.
The commission dates back more than a decade. The State Department's Art in Embassies program — a cultural diplomacy initiative that places American art in U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad — commissioned Wiley in 2015 to create the portrait for the Dominican Republic embassy, as Observer reported at the time.
Kehinde Wiley is best known to the general public for his official portrait of President Barack Obama, unveiled in 2018 and now part of the National Portrait Gallery's collection in Washington, D.C. His work typically renders Black and brown subjects in the grand poses and lush style of European Old Master painting — a juxtaposition that has made him one of the most recognisable American painters working today.
The Art in Embassies program operates under the State Department and has, since the 1960s, curated rotating exhibitions of U.S. art at diplomatic missions worldwide. Works are often loaned by artists, galleries or collectors for display in embassy residences and public spaces, though some are commissioned directly.
ARTnews did not specify which agency would handle a potential sale, whether the painting is owned outright by the U.S. government or on loan, or what its estimated value might be. The State Department has not publicly confirmed the reported deliberations.
For an art program designed to project American culture abroad, the prospect of selling a commissioned embassy painting is unusual. Federal art holdings are generally subject to strict disposal rules, and any sale would raise questions about how government-owned cultural property is valued and unloaded.
