Taking place in Gallery 276, this free exhibition opens March 15, 2025

February 6, 2025

MINNEAPOLIS—The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is proud to collaborate with the Mary Sully Foundation and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) to present the exhibit “Mary Sully: Native Modern,” dedicated to the groundbreaking work of Yankton Dakota artist Mary Sully (Susan Mabel Deloria). “Mary Sully: Native Modern” will be on view at Mia from March 15 through September 21, 2025. It offers visitors a rare opportunity to explore Sully’s innovative and deeply personal approach to artmaking.

“Mary Sully, a groundbreaking Dakota artist, was overlooked by art historians for nearly a century,” said Katie Luber, Nivin and Duncan MacMillan Director and President of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. “In the early 20thcentury, Sully quietly revolutionized Native and American art by forging connections between these seemingly distinct genres, ultimately transforming the field of American art.”

Sully boldly produced her own form of modernism, just as the American audience was beginning to take note of the language of abstraction, experimentation, and subjective experience.  In the words of Harvard historian and Sully’s great nephew Philip J. Deloria, “Mary Sully staked a claim to native modernism.”

Working without patronage, in near obscurity, and largely self-taught, Sully produced more than 130 intricately drawn and vividly colored three-panel ‘personality prints’ along with several detailed drawings that captured the culture of her Dakota community and other Native nations, scenes she observed while living in New York City and vignettes of popular culture of the 1920s and ’30s.

This is the first solo exhibition of Sully’s groundbreaking production and highlights works that call into question traditional notions of Native American and modern art through recent acquisitions by the Minneapolis Institute of Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, together with loans from the Mary Sully Foundation. The Met’s presentation of “Mary Sully: Native Modern” (July 18, 2024–January 12, 2025) included Sully’s works from their collection as well as loans from the Mary Sully Foundation.

“This exhibition highlights Mia’s recent acquisitions, including Sully’s celebrated ‘personality portraits,’” said Valeria Piccoli, Ken and Linda Cutler Chair of the Arts of the Americas. “These intricate triptychs combine motifs from Western art with Dakota tradition, creating striking visual compositions that evoke the essence of her subjects’ personalities. Through this unique lens, “Mary Sully: Native Modern” challenges conventional definitions of Native American and modern art, showcasing Sully’s ability to bridge these artistic worlds with bold creativity.”

Mia’s Unique Additions

Mia’s presentation of “Mary Sully: Native Modern” includes several of Sully’s most compelling works, acquired in November 2023. Among them are:

• Shirley Temple: This work depicts the child star of the Great Depression. It combines playful concentric rings symbolizing Shirley’s bubbly personality with Dakota beadwork motifs, linking the child star to young Dakota girls.
• Spring: Vibrant hearts and flowers represent renewal and freedom, drawn from traditional Dakota designs found in beadwork.
• Judge Hartman: This triptych, a tribute to a New York City judge and philanthropist, incorporates Art Nouveau designs and Dakota values of family and relationships.
• George Ade: Sully celebrates the writer’s hospitality and generosity through estate-inspired designs and quilled moccasin motifs.
• Anton Lang: In this spiritual portrait, Sully draws on Dakota religious imagery and the path of spiritual exploration.
• Steinmetz: Honoring the electrical engineering pioneer, the piece features blue energy waves and Dakota patterns reflecting cosmological energy.
• Pavlova: A delicate portrayal of the famed ballerina Anna Pavlova, blending Dakota quillwork with the grace of her iconic performance, The Dying Swan.
• Titled Husbands in the USA: This satirical work critiques the societal trend of wealthy American women marrying European nobles, blending motifs of Dakota quillwork with stained glass designs found in churches.

These works, alongside others, demonstrate Sully’s remarkable ability to synthesize diverse artistic traditions into a cohesive and uniquely personal vision. Mia first showed Sully’s work in the 2019 exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.”

The Minneapolis Institute of Art organized this exhibition in collaboration with the Mary Sully Foundation and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Exhibition Details

• Exhibition Title: Mary Sully: Native Modern
• Dates: March 15–September 21, 2025
• Location: Gallery 276, Minneapolis Institute of Art
• Cost: Free

For more information on “Mary Sully: Native Modern” and other upcoming exhibitions, visit www.artsmia.org.

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About Mary Sully

As a great-granddaughter of the successful 19th-century portraitist Thomas Sully (1783–1872), Susan Deloria expressly adopted the name of her mother, Mary Sully (1858–1916), daughter of Alfred Sully (1820–1879) and the Dakota woman Susan Pehandutawin (dates unknown), an artist in her own right. Deloria grew up in a distinguished family of Dakota leaders. Her sister, Ella Cara Deloria (1889–1971), with whom she primarily lived, was a linguistic ethnographer trained by the esteemed Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas. Her nephew, Vine Deloria, Jr. (1933–2005), was an author, theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. Her great-nephew, historian Philip J. Deloria, is the author of Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract (University of Washington Press, 2019), the only scholarly investigation of her art and life.

About the Minneapolis Institute of Art

Home to more than 100,000 works of art representing 7,000 years of world history, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) inspires wonder, spurs creativity, and nourishes the imagination. With extraordinary exhibitions and one of the finest art collections in the country—from all corners of the globe, from ancient to contemporary—Mia links the past to the present, enables global conversations, and offers an exceptional setting for inspiration.  Learn more about Mia in our latest Impact Report.

General admission to Mia is always free, but some special exhibitions charge a nominal fee.

For more information, call + 1 612 870 3000 or visit www.artsmia.org. Everyone is welcome. Always.