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60 Minutes - Season 58 - Episode 04: The Dealmakers; Erez Reuveni; Amy Sherald
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00:07Tonight, President Trump's hand-picked dealmakers take us inside the negotiations between Israel
00:14and Hamas that led to a breakthrough in one of the world's most intractable conflicts.
00:20I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success.
00:24Yes.
00:25And you said?
00:26A hundred percent. And he said, why do you feel so confident?
00:30Yeah.
00:30And I said, well, we can't afford to fail.
00:34I felt like a bomb had gone off.
00:37Eris Ravini won awards as a government attorney in the first Trump administration.
00:42Now he's been fired, he says, for standing up to lawlessness in the Department of Justice.
00:50There was a pattern and practice at the direction of DOJ leadership to ignore court orders.
00:56And worst of all, it's a lie.
01:00Amy Sherrill's paintings have sold for as much as $4 million and are often compared to work by the great
01:07masters of American realism.
01:09Does that make sense to you in any way?
01:11It's technically what I wanted as a black woman, artist, American, for people to be like, yeah, Amy Sherrill, Norman
01:18Rockwell, Edward Hopper, like, I'm in the room with the guys.
01:22And so I think I'm okay with it.
01:25Yeah, I think I'm okay.
01:26Not a bad room to be in.
01:27No.
01:27No.
01:28Yeah.
01:30I'm Leslie Stahl.
01:32I'm Scott Pelley.
01:33I'm Anderson Cooper.
01:35I'm Sharon Alfonsi.
01:36I'm John Wertheim.
01:37I'm Cecilia Vega.
01:39I'm Bill Whitaker.
01:40Those stories end in our last minute, The Mentalist on People's Minds, tonight on 60 Minutes.
01:55It's less than a week since the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages, and the deal between Israel and
02:02Hamas is already being tested, with Israel carrying out airstrikes after accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire.
02:11That a ceasefire had been reached at all was a big surprise.
02:15It followed months of failed attempts to end the two-year war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's October 7th attack.
02:24The breakthrough came after President Trump deputized not two diplomats to move the negotiations along, but two businessmen.
02:34One, a close friend, Steve Witkoff.
02:37The other, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, dealmakers who came up through the world of New York real estate.
02:45I heard the president asked you what the chances were for success.
02:49Yes.
02:50And you said?
02:52100%.
02:53And he said, why do you feel so confident?
02:55Yeah.
02:56And I said, well, we can't afford to fail.
02:57We just kept on thinking to ourselves, this finish line, this finish line is about saving lives.
03:03Yes.
03:04Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner got to that finish line, they say, using the intensely personal techniques of real estate
03:12dealmakers, dangling presidential promises, protections or punishments to get Israel and Hamas to agree.
03:20We wanted the hostages to come out.
03:22We wanted a real ceasefire that both sides would respect.
03:26We needed a way to bring humanitarian aid into the people.
03:29And then we had to write all these complex words to deal with the 50 years of stupid word games
03:33that everyone in that region is so used to playing.
03:36Both sides wanted the objective, and we just need to find a way to help everyone get there.
03:40Early September, Kushner, Witkoff and negotiators from the Middle East were making headway on a ceasefire hostage deal when suddenly
03:50things went up in smoke.
03:54Israel fired missiles into Qatar to assassinate Hamas leadership.
03:58Oh, my goodness.
03:59Six people were killed, including the son of Khalil al-Hayah, Hamas's top negotiator.
04:06We woke up the next morning to find out that there had been this attack.
04:09Wow.
04:10And, of course, I was called by the president.
04:12You had no idea, obviously.
04:13None whatsoever.
04:14You know, I think both Jared and I felt, I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed.
04:23Now, I had heard that the president, that he was furious.
04:28I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing
04:36and that it was time to, it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that
04:44he felt were not in their long term interests.
04:46People should understand that Netanyahu, the Israelis, bombed the peacemakers, bombed the negotiating team.
04:54And, by the way, Leslie, it had a metastasizing effect because the Qataris were critical to the negotiation, as were
05:01the Egyptians and the Turks.
05:03And we had lost the confidence of the Qataris.
05:07Right.
05:07And so Hamas went underground and it was very, very difficult to get to them.
05:13And they were the, your link to Hamas.
05:16Absolutely.
05:16You were dealing through the Qataris to make your proposals to Hamas.
05:20And it became very, very evident as to how important and how critical that role was.
05:25But there was something that happened that brought the Qataris back in.
05:31And that was this phone call that I think President Trump actually forced Netanyahu to make to the Qataris.
05:40I wouldn't call it forced.
05:41You wouldn't?
05:42No, I would, I would say.
05:43Look that way.
05:44That I would.
05:45He's becoming a diplomat.
05:46Clearly.
05:47Whether the president himself knew of the attack in advance or not, he wanted Netanyahu to apologize to the Qataris.
05:56The apology needed to happen.
05:58It just did.
05:59We were not moving forward without that apology.
06:01And the president said to him, people apologize.
06:04And so, on September 29th, the president held the phone while Netanyahu read a scripted apology from the Oval Office.
06:13It's time.
06:14Mr. Trump was now directly engaged.
06:17He gave Qatar a new security guarantee.
06:20So today is a historic day for peace.
06:23And introduced his own peace plan, calling for an immediate ceasefire and release of all remaining Israeli hostages all at
06:32once.
06:33The notion was to convince everybody that those 20 Israeli hostages who were alive were no longer assets for Hamas.
06:41They were a liability.
06:43How did they become a liability and not their sort of bargaining chip?
06:48What did Hamas gain by keeping these hostages?
06:51You had tens of thousands of Palestinians who were killed in these wars.
06:55You have half of Gaza, or more than half of it, is absolutely destroyed.
06:59And so what's been the gain?
07:01But Hamas was still reluctant.
07:04Hamas' worst nightmare in the deal would be that Israel withdrew to the agreed-upon line.
07:09Hamas released all the hostages.
07:11And then once that occurred, Israel just resumed the war and went back to going after them.
07:16To reassure Hamas, President Trump gave Kushner and Witkoff permission to talk directly with the terrorists, a big break with
07:26diplomatic protocol.
07:27On October 8th, the two landed in Egypt to deliver a message from President Trump to al-Hayah, Hamas' top
07:36negotiator.
07:37The president said, we will stand behind this deal.
07:40We will not allow the terms of this deal for any party to be violated.
07:44And both sides will be treated fairly.
07:47And both sides will be treated fairly.
07:48So we got into the room.
07:50The lead negotiator was sitting right next to me.
07:52That negotiator was in Doha when the Israelis struck.
07:57Correct.
07:57He survived, but his son was killed.
08:00Is that right?
08:01That's right.
08:01And we expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son.
08:05He mentioned it.
08:06And I told him that I had lost a son.
08:09And that we were both members of a really bad club.
08:13Parents who had buried children.
08:15Witkoff's son, Andrew, died of an opioid overdose at the age of 22.
08:21When Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two
08:29human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.
08:32Is it true that once the deal was agreed to, that the Israelis there at that meeting and the Qataris
08:40began to hug each other?
08:41Absolutely.
08:42And I thought to myself, I wish the world could have seen it.
08:45The deal allowed members of Hamas to stay in Gaza and called on Israel to release nearly 2,000 Palestinians,
08:54including some convicted terrorists.
08:57Once the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas was given 72 hours to free the Israeli hostages.
09:04Kushner and Witkoff waited nervously.
09:08So, you decide to go to Gaza.
09:10Mm-hmm.
09:11And what did you see?
09:13It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area.
09:16And then you see these people moving back.
09:18And I asked the IDF, where are they going?
09:20Like, I'm looking around.
09:21These are all ruins.
09:22And they said, well, they're going back to the areas where their destroyed home was, onto their plot, and they're
09:27going to pitch a tent.
09:27And it's very sad, because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go.
09:32Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide?
09:37No.
09:38No.
09:38Absolutely not.
09:39No.
09:41No, there was a war being fought.
09:43So that very night, you go to Hostage Square, where the families of the hostages have been protesting, mourning, being
09:51very frustrated, angry sometimes.
09:53And every time you mentioned President Trump.
09:56To President Donald J. Trump.
10:00I had to stop, because they were cheering.
10:02Thank you, Trump!
10:04Thank you, Trump!
10:05But then, you tried to thank Netanyahu.
10:09Yeah.
10:10And?
10:10To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
10:14Oh.
10:17Every time you said his name, they booed.
10:19Look, that's how they feel.
10:20I don't feel that way.
10:22And I thought he steered his country through some really difficult circumstances.
10:27People think that he prolonged the incarceration of the hostages for his own political future.
10:35Yeah, I don't think that's the case.
10:37October 7th, for me, was a shattering day.
10:41Since then, my heart has not been complete.
10:45But then Kushner brought up the Gazans.
10:47To see the suffering end for the people in Gaza, who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no
10:55fault of their own.
10:56The biggest message that we've tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is
11:01over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help
11:07the Palestinian people thrive and do better.
11:10How are you doing with that message?
11:12We're just getting started.
11:14How sure are you that what you've accomplished so far is going to stick?
11:19First of all, it's the Middle East, so everyone complains about everything.
11:23One worrisome issue, whether Hamas is dragging its feet in returning the remains of deceased Israeli hostages.
11:31Are you saying, publicly, right now, that Hamas is acting in good faith, seriously looking for the bodies?
11:39As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far.
11:43That could break down at any minute.
11:45But right now, we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.
11:49Another flashpoint, the number of trucks Israel is allowing to enter Gaza with desperately needed food, medicine, and other aid.
11:59Then there are several issues that were kicked down the road, left unresolved, like the extent of Israeli troop withdrawal,
12:07the need to establish an international peacekeeping mechanism, a functional government in Gaza,
12:14and most urgently, when and how Hamas will disarm.
12:19Hamas now is using weapons to execute people that they perceive as their enemies in Gaza.
12:27And they're also using their weapons to reestablish themselves as the entity that is governing Gaza.
12:34They're moving into the vacuum.
12:36Hamas right now is doing exactly what you would expect a terrorist organization to do,
12:40which is to try to reconstitute and take back their positions.
12:44Right.
12:44The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism
12:49is able to create a viable alternative.
12:51If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future.
12:57The eventual rebuilding of Gaza will be a monumental project.
13:01That the two businessmen running the negotiations have deep financial ties in the Middle East,
13:08specifically in Qatar, has raised ethical concerns.
13:12So you have both done a lot of business with the Gulf states, billions and billions of dollars worth of
13:21business.
13:21And you've done some of the business, wow, this negotiation has gone on.
13:26And that has raised some issues of conflict.
13:31I mean, some blurring of a line between, you know, what you're doing in terms of foreign policy
13:37and benefiting financially from what's going on.
13:42So, first of all, Leslie, nobody's pointed out any instances where Steve or I have pursued any policies
13:48or done anything that have not been in the interests of America.
13:52With that perception?
13:54But, Leslie, we can't spend our time focused on perception as much as we have to focus on the facts.
13:59We're here to do good. These are impossible tasks.
14:01And because this is important, I've volunteered my time to help the president and Steve try to make progress.
14:07But Steve nor I will be involved in awarding contracts or figuring out who does business, you know, in Gaza
14:13after.
14:14Well, from my standpoint, Leslie, I'm not in business anymore.
14:18Yeah, but your family is.
14:19But I've divested. Like Jared, I receive no salary and I pay all my own expenses.
14:26This has become an issue.
14:28What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.
14:35If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal that we were able to help get done that
14:41freed these hostages would not have occurred.
14:46This past Monday, the Israeli hostages, all 20, were home in Israel.
14:54Families marveling with joy, disbelief, emotions so deep it hurt.
15:04Steve, how are you feeling when they come up?
15:07Elated. Elated.
15:09And I was thinking to myself, what would I have felt like when I got the call from Cedars-Sinai
15:15Hospital that my son had died?
15:17If the call from them was, he didn't die.
15:20Oh, God.
15:21We revived him.
15:22And these people were all getting that type of call.
15:26Their kids were coming home.
15:28But less than a week after their return, the ceasefire is under strain.
15:34And the dealmakers are back in the region trying to keep things from unraveling.
15:46Is Ukraine next up for the dealmakers?
15:49That answer.
15:50Plus, watch the extended interview with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at 60MinutesOvertime.com.
16:03Arez Rouveni was on his way up.
16:06He was an attorney in the Department of Justice who was so effective defending President Trump's first-term immigration policy
16:14that he was promoted right away in Trump's second term.
16:18But Rouveni's 15-year Justice Department career ended suddenly after he says he witnessed government lawyers lying in court and
16:28evading orders of a judge.
16:31These last few months have been a time of upheaval in the Justice Department.
16:35Now Rouveni's claims are raising concern in courtrooms across the country.
16:41The administration has called Rouveni a leaker, seeking five minutes of fame.
16:47But in his first television interview, Arez Rouveni told us he's paid a price.
16:53Speaking up cost him his dream.
16:58Even before I went to law school, I understood what I wanted to do as a lawyer was to be
17:02involved in public service.
17:04And everyone understood at the time you do it at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.
17:10There's no better place as a young attorney to just do the sorts of cases where you're standing up in
17:16court as a first chair attorney on behalf of the United States doing things that law firm partners don't do.
17:22And that meant what to you?
17:24That meant I was there on behalf of the American people, on behalf of the millions of citizens of this
17:30country to make sure that justice was done.
17:32Arez Rouveni started in 2010 as a so-called career attorney.
17:38Most lawyers at the Justice Department stay for years, even decades, defending the policies of one president after another.
17:47Rouveni specialized in immigration law.
17:50And in the first Trump term, he defended the controversial ban on travelers from Muslim countries, among many other cases.
17:58I was promoted.
18:00I received three awards for defense of fairly high-profile litigation.
18:07I defended everything they put on my plate.
18:10That was my job.
18:11And at the beginning of the second Trump administration, you were promoted again.
18:15That's right.
18:16Very soon into the administration, I was selected to be the acting deputy director of the immigration section, overseeing about
18:24100 attorneys and every case that arose in the federal district courts.
18:28But it was the very day of that promotion, Friday, March 14th, that he and others were called to a
18:35fateful meeting with Emil Bovey, President Trump's newly appointed number three at the Justice Department, who was once Trump's criminal
18:44defense attorney.
18:46And we were told at this meeting that over the weekend, the president of the United States would be signing
18:53a proclamation invoking something called the Alien Enemies Act.
18:56This is a wartime law from 1798 invoked three times in the nation's history during the War of 1812, World
19:05War I and World War II.
19:06The Alien Enemies Act allows rapid expulsion from the U.S. of the citizens of enemy nations during a war.
19:16But without a declared war, Trump used it against more than 100 Venezuelans that the government said were terrorists.
19:24They were to be denied their right to be heard by a judge.
19:29Ruvani says Bovey expected a challenge.
19:32Bovey emphasized those planes need to take off no matter what.
19:39And then after a pause, he also told all in attendance,
19:43and if some court should issue an order preventing that, we may have to consider telling that court,
19:51you.
19:52And when you heard that, you thought what?
19:55It felt like a bomb had gone off.
19:57Here is the number three official using expletives to tell career attorneys that we may just have to consider disregarding
20:05federal court orders.
20:06The next day, Saturday, lawyers for the prisoners sued.
20:11Judge James Boesberg called a hearing and asked government lawyer Drew Ensign whether the planes were leaving that weekend.
20:20And Ensign says to Boesberg, I don't know.
20:25Now, Ensign was at the same meeting that I was at the day before where we were told in no
20:31uncertain terms that planes were taking off over the weekend,
20:35that those planes needed to take off no matter what.
20:38And he says, I don't know.
20:40Ruvani says that moment in court was stunning.
20:43It is the highest, most egregious violation of a lawyer's code of ethics to mislead a court with intent.
20:53We don't know Ensign's intent.
20:55It was during the hearing that the planes took off.
21:00The judge issued an order and immediately, Ruvani emailed the agencies involved.
21:05The judge specifically ordered us to not remove anyone and to return anyone in the air.
21:13But that didn't happen.
21:15Instead, more than five hours after Boesberg's order, the detainees and other prisoners arrived at a maximum security prison in
21:24El Salvador.
21:26And then it really hit me.
21:28It's like, we really did tell the court, screw you.
21:32We really did just tell the courts, we don't care about your order.
21:37You can't tell us what to do.
21:41That was just a real gut punch.
21:45The Department of Justice has the responsibility to obey all court orders.
21:50It can disagree with the order.
21:51It can appeal it.
21:52It can ask the judge to reconsider.
21:54But while the order is in effect, it's the obligation of the department to see to it that the government
21:59complies.
22:00Peter Keisler should know.
22:02He ran the Justice Department as Acting Attorney General in 2007 for George W. Bush.
22:09He worked in Ronald Reagan's White House.
22:12And today, he's part of a law firm representing federal workers fired by the administration.
22:18But some people watching this interview are thinking,
22:20if these people have been labeled by the administration as terrorists, as gang members, then we should get them out
22:26of the country as quickly as possible.
22:28And they're a lawful means to get people who are terrorists out of the country.
22:32Lawful means that Keisler says must include giving the detainees a chance in court to contest the charges.
22:40Look, we have a saying in this country, it's deeply embedded in who we are.
22:45Everybody deserves their day in court.
22:47And all of us want to know that if the government acts against us, we will at least have the
22:52opportunity to go to a neutral decision maker, present evidence and legal argument, and make sure that the government stays
22:59within its legal bounds.
23:00But does the day in court apply to immigrants?
23:03Absolutely.
23:04Nobody can be spirited out of the country without some opportunity to contest the factual and legal basis for that.
23:11And it turned out, when the full facts were known, this Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by
23:20mistake.
23:20Normally, people deported in error are returned, but instead, Ruvaney says that in a phone call from a superior, he
23:30was ordered to argue against Abrego Garcia's return by telling a judge that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 gang
23:39member and a terrorist.
23:41And I respond, up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It
23:51is not legally correct. That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief.
23:57You're not saying Abrego Garcia is a choir boy. You're just saying that no one had managed to prove that
24:03he was a terrorist.
24:04Here's the really important thing here. Whether Mr. Abrego Garcia is or isn't a member of MS-13 or a
24:12terrorist or anything else is beside the point.
24:15What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights.
24:22What's to stop them if they decide they don't like you anymore, to say you're a criminal, you're a member
24:28of MS-13, you're a terrorist?
24:29What's to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster,
24:39and if necessary, to lie?
24:41And now that's you gone and your liberty changed.
24:43After refusing to sign the brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist, Ruvaney was fired.
24:50In June, he teamed up with lawyers from the Government Accountability Project to file a whistleblower disclosure.
24:59Making his story public helped expose a growing concern in many courts across the country that too often now the
25:09Justice Department is abusing the limits of the law.
25:13So the judges are saying some incredible things.
25:16Ryan Goodman is a law professor at New York University who heads a nonpartisan law journal.
25:22His team has analyzed hundreds of suits filed against the administration.
25:28And he didn't imagine what judges were saying to the Trump Justice Department.
25:33We found over 35 cases in which the judges have specifically said what the government is providing me is false
25:41information and might be intentionally false information, including false sworn declarations time and again.
25:47In court records compiled by Goodman, Democratic and Republican appointed judges are critical of the Trump Justice Department's work.
25:57Highly misleading, said one judge.
25:59A serious violation of the court's order, wrote another.
26:04And a third warned, trust that had been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.
26:11This isn't the way things normally proceed?
26:13It's not.
26:14In fact, I would say for some of the cases that we're looking at, maybe that would happen once every
26:2010 years.
26:21Who gets hurt by this?
26:23The one entity or person or institution gets hurt the most is the Justice Department.
26:28We requested interviews with the head of the department, Attorney General Pam Bondi, her former deputy, Emil Bovey, and Drew
26:36Ensign, the attorney who said he didn't know when the planes were taking off, according to the court transcript.
26:43All declined the interview request.
26:46Bovey was nominated for a judgeship.
26:49And in June, he was asked about Ruvaney's claims.
26:53I have never advised a Department of Justice attorney to violate a court order.
26:58Bovey said in part that Ruvaney was in no position to tell his superiors what to do.
27:04There's a suggestion that a line attorney, not even the head of the office of immigration litigation, was in a
27:12position or considered himself to be to bind the department's leadership and other cabinet officials.
27:19Bovey was also asked if he had dismissed the courts with an expletive.
27:24Well, did you suggest telling the court you in any manner?
27:28I don't recall.
27:31Bovey was confirmed for the judgeship.
27:33And in a statement to 60 Minutes, he wrote in part,
27:37Mr. Ruvaney's claims are a mix of falsehoods and wild distortions of reality.
27:44Kilmar Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S.
27:48He's now charged with transporting illegal immigrants, and he's pled not guilty.
27:53A judge criticized the Justice Department's poor attempts to connect him to MS-13, and he was not charged with
28:03terrorism.
28:04About those prisoners sent to El Salvador, they were released to their home country, Venezuela.
28:11And in April, the Supreme Court agreed unanimously that they had been entitled to their day in court.
28:21This interview is the first time that your face has been seen in such a public way.
28:27And I wonder if that concerns you.
28:31It does.
28:33At the same time, I think about what we're losing in this moment.
28:38I think about why I went to the Department of Justice to do justice.
28:44And I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.
28:49And my view of that oath is I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to
28:54the Department,
28:55what is happening to the rule of law.
28:57I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.
29:13When Amy Sherald was selected to paint the official portrait of Michelle Obama eight years ago,
29:18many people in the art world didn't know who she was.
29:21They do now.
29:23At 52, Sherald has become one of America's most celebrated painters.
29:27She's had two major museum retrospectives this year and was supposed to have a third this month at the Smithsonian's
29:34National Portrait Gallery.
29:35But Sherald canceled it.
29:37Concerned, she says, that museum officials, already under pressure from the Trump administration,
29:42were going to try and censor a painting.
29:44The controversy made headlines, but Sherald has faced much bigger challenges than that.
29:51Like many of the people she paints, Amy Sherald has found a way to make her way.
29:58In Amy Sherald's paintings, her subjects, black Americans, stare silently straight out from the canvas.
30:05There's something in their eyes that draws you in, something knowing in their gaze.
30:09They appear unapologetic, unafraid, posed against monochromatic backgrounds or in scenes as bright and bold as they are.
30:19In this painting, a farmer leans atop an impossibly pristine John Deere tractor surrounded by blue sky and green grass.
30:28In so many of your paintings, the subject is looking out at the viewer.
30:32I think that's important. I don't think these portraits are confrontational, but they are present.
30:37And they do want you to sit with them and have an exchange.
30:41They have jobs. They're doing their jobs.
30:45You know, they're being beautiful. They're being colorful.
30:48But they also have work to do in the world.
30:50And they're doing that work in your painting.
30:52By standing there and being present and looking at you and meeting your gaze, that's the work.
30:59They don't have to say anything.
31:01But every time you look at that portrait, something is happening inside of you.
31:06Amy Sherald's work hangs in the most prestigious museums in America and in the rooms of major collectors and some
31:13smaller ones, including me.
31:16This summer, she gave us a private tour of her show, American Sublime, while I was at the Whitney Museum
31:21of American Art in New York,
31:23home to some of the greatest artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.
31:28Sherald has been dreaming of having a show here for years.
31:31I would sit in my studio every day and I would meditate and visualize myself in this space.
31:37How does it compare to the fantasy?
31:39It's exactly like it.
31:40Is it?
31:40Yeah, it's perfect.
31:42Her paintings are portraits, but not in the traditional sense.
31:45The people in them are real, but their names are rarely used.
31:50She's cast them in a visual story all her own.
31:53The process starts with a photograph.
31:56After I randomly come across some person that I'd like to say, like, my energy recognizes their energy or there's
32:03something there, right?
32:04And just kind of hold it like you're...
32:06They come to the studio and either I already have a vision in my head of what I want to
32:11create or they are the walking vision of what I want to make and I photograph them.
32:18She's used friends, models, dancers, strangers she's seen on the street.
32:23The clothes they wear are often thrift store finds.
32:27Sherald has racks of them in her studio.
32:29I've had this for probably five years.
32:31Just waiting for the right person.
32:33There were only two paintings in Sherald's show of people whose names were used.
32:38This is her portrait of a very alive Breonna Taylor, painted after she was shot to death by police in
32:452020 in a botched raid on her apartment.
32:48And this is Sherald's most famous work, the former first lady titled Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama.
32:56Unveiled in 2018, it made headlines around the world.
33:01Did you know how important this was going to be for your career?
33:05Yes.
33:05Did you think about that?
33:06I think in the moment, I wasn't thinking about that because if I did, I probably would have just freaked
33:12out.
33:13You know, I just stayed out of my head and stayed in the painting.
33:16What stands out to you?
33:19When I look at it now, the dress, like I'm deeply in love with this dress.
33:25Just the red, the pink, the yellow, and then the black and gray.
33:28I wanted the dress to also have some kind of symbolism and almost be a painting in and of itself.
33:36Before coming to the Whitney, American Sublime was at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
33:41Sarah Roberts was the show's curator.
33:44I wasn't sure we could do Amy Sherrill for 60 Minutes because I'm not sure that cameras really capture the
33:52work.
33:52It's a very different experience to see it in person.
33:55There's a luminescent quality to it.
33:57Yes.
33:57There's a quality to the color that is impossible to catch on camera.
34:01They have a majesty and a tactility when you see them in person that they lose in reproduction.
34:07How does she do that?
34:08She's an incredible painter.
34:11I mean, just the technical skill.
34:15That's what it comes down to.
34:15Cheryl's style of painting is called American Realism.
34:18It's a way of depicting the ordinary in American life.
34:23It has meant slightly different things to the different painters it's been applied to.
34:27And she is creating images that say something about America right now.
34:31Ideas of freedom, ideas of individualism, freedom of expression, and a lot of kind of Americana ideas.
34:40You know, there's the cowboy and the beauty queen and the white picket fence.
34:45She's reimagining them and redeploying them to make sure that that idea of America includes everyone.
34:52Everybody has a seat at the table.
34:54A place on a museum wall.
34:56It was this painting on a museum wall that Amy Sherrill says changed her life.
35:01She saw it on a class trip to the City Art Museum in Columbus, Georgia when she was a teenager.
35:06It was painted by an American artist named Beau Bartlett.
35:10There was a figure in it that was an image of a black man.
35:15And I realized in that moment that I had never seen a black person in a painting before.
35:20In any painting you had not seen a black person?
35:22In any painting.
35:22What did you think?
35:23I thought I want to do this too.
35:25You knew in that moment you thought that I want to do this?
35:28A hundred percent.
35:28A hundred percent.
35:29It turned on the light.
35:32Her parents, Amos and Geraldine Sherrill, hoped she'd be a doctor.
35:35But in college, she broke the news to them she was going to devote her life to art.
35:40She spent more than a decade painting by day and waiting tables at night.
35:45Did you ever think this is not going to work out?
35:48Yeah.
35:48But I couldn't give up.
35:50Like I always say, the world is full of quitters.
35:52And most people don't want the discomfort and most people don't want the risk.
35:56So if I kept at it, then eventually something would have to happen.
36:01What happened was not what she expected.
36:04Cheryl, an avid runner, was training for a triathlon in 2004 when she was diagnosed with a rare heart condition.
36:12My doctor said, you're lucky to be alive.
36:14He's basically said, like, don't do anything to get your heart rate up because you could have a tachycardic episode
36:19and you could die.
36:20She nearly did eight years later.
36:23She collapsed in a drug store and spent months in the hospital before receiving a heart transplant.
36:29She was 39 years old.
36:31The donor was a young woman named Kristen Lynn Smith.
36:35Does it feel different to have somebody else's heart?
36:39It doesn't anymore, but it does, I'd say for like the first five years.
36:44Wow.
36:45For five years?
36:46Yeah.
36:47You think about it a lot.
36:49I have moments where I think of her and they're usually when I'm doing something that I wouldn't have been
36:54able to do.
36:55So like whenever that happens, I have on my Instagram account, I hashtag it Adventures of Kristen and Amy so
37:02that I can mark all the big moments and include her in those moments.
37:07And when I sign my name, I put a little heart on the end for her.
37:12So she lives in all your paintings?
37:15She does.
37:16Yeah.
37:18Amy Sherrill's studio is in this warehouse in New Jersey.
37:21She makes about a half dozen new paintings here a year.
37:25In a closet, there's a wall full of paints in colors she's mixed herself.
37:30This is the gray scale that I paint from when I'm doing the skin.
37:35Skin color in her portraits is something Sherald has given a lot of thought to.
37:40If you hadn't noticed, she doesn't use brown or black.
37:43She paints her subject's skin in shades of gray.
37:47Right now, we're in the mid-tone phase where I'm still shaping the face.
37:52At first, she says she just liked the way the gray looked.
37:55It reminded her of old family photographs she grew up with.
37:59This one is of her maternal grandmother.
38:02You want somebody to see the humanity in your subject.
38:05I think that's where it starts.
38:07That's why I chose to use the gray scale instead of brown skin.
38:14I think that it offers the viewer an opportunity to pause and consider something else before we get to that.
38:22If they had brown skin in your painting, would that be the first thing that people noticed?
38:28I think so.
38:30I mean, I think we still look at each other through our phenotypes anyway.
38:33Phenotypes is what?
38:34Phenotypes are your eyes, your nose, your lips.
38:37Like, you know, you can look at somebody and say like,
38:40Oh, because this person is probably Caucasian and this person is probably not Caucasian, you know?
38:45But they look black. I can't take blackness away from them.
38:49But the lack of color allows for a different entry point.
38:52When did you realize that?
38:54When I became afraid to paint brown people because I was afraid that the work would be marginalized and not
39:03be able to be in conversation with other artists.
39:07Just it'd be put in the black corner.
39:09That certainly seems unlikely now.
39:11At auctions, her paintings have sold for as much as $4 million and are often compared to work by the
39:18masters of American realism.
39:19Edward Hopper, Andrew Wyeth, even Norman Rockwell.
39:24Does that make sense to you in any way?
39:26It's technically what I wanted as a black woman, artist, American, for people to be like,
39:32Yeah, Amy Sherald, Norman Rockwell, Edward Hopper.
39:35Like, I'm in the room with the guys.
39:37And so I think I'm okay with it.
39:40Yeah, I think I'm okay.
39:41Not a bad room to be in.
39:42No.
39:43Yeah.
39:44Before we left her studio, Sherald showed us this model made in preparation for the now canceled exhibition of American
39:51Sublime at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.
39:54You get to see how it flows and then what kind of story it's telling as the viewer walks through.
40:00She told us she backed out of the show in July after learning Smithsonian officials were concerned about this painting
40:07of a trans person posing as the Statue of Liberty and wanted to display it alongside a video they said
40:14would, in their words, contextualize the piece.
40:17The Trump administration had for months been criticizing the Smithsonian as being too woke and promised to review its exhibitions.
40:25When Sherald canceled, the White House applauded, calling the painting, quote, divisive and ideological.
40:32There were conversations about the work being censored.
40:38The show is American Sublime.
40:40It was a whole narrative.
40:41And a trans woman is a part of that narrative for me.
40:44Any kind of contextualization around the work would have been unacceptable and it would have deviated from how the work
40:51was originally conceived.
40:53And because of that, I felt like my only choice was to pull out.
40:58Do you see your work as political?
41:00Today I do.
41:01I don't think that it's in its true nature from where it comes from inside of me political, but it
41:08lives in the world and therefore can be art on Monday.
41:13And political on Tuesday, you know, it's like the pinnacle for me.
41:18Sheryl's paintings won't be hidden away for long.
41:20After she canceled the show in Washington, the Baltimore Museum of Art offered to exhibit American Sublime.
41:27The show opens there November 2nd.
41:30Do you consider the work patriotic?
41:32Yes.
41:33I don't think there's anybody more patriotic than a black person.
41:38How so?
41:38I mean, we've been here since the inception of this idea of what American is.
41:43We are deeply ingrained in the fabric of this country.
41:48This country would not be if it was not for us.
41:51So I have to claim that patriotism.
41:54Otherwise, I'm just handing it over to somebody to give me the definition of what it means to be American.
42:02But I know what the definition of what it means to be American is.
42:05And I'm the definition of an American.
42:16The last minute of 60 minutes is sponsored by UnitedHealthcare.
42:21Coverage you can count on for your whole life ahead.
42:27Now, a look ahead to next week and Cecilia Vega's story about Oz Perlman.
42:33He's a master at making people think he can read their minds.
42:38Perlman told us the key to his act is reading body language to reveal what someone is thinking, such as
42:45an ATM pin code.
42:47Five, eight, three, one.
42:56People that are very intelligent are much easier because their mind is regimented in a certain way.
43:03Like, I perform for Nobel laureates.
43:04And you go, this is one of the most intelligent people on the planet.
43:07I go, hook, line and sinker. Let's go. This is going to be a cakewalk.
43:10The mentalist can pull one over on anybody, including us.
43:15Okay, now you're freaking me out.
43:18I'm Bill Whitaker.
43:20That story and more next week on another edition of 60 Minutes.
43:29If you love 60 Minutes, see America's stories told every weeknight on the CBS Evening News.
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