The Minneapolis Institute of Art is currently showcasing "Mary Sully: Native Modern," a captivating exhibition that runs through September 21, featuring the groundbreaking work of a Native American artist who revolutionized the intersection of traditional indigenous art and contemporary modernism. The exhibition reveals Sully's distinctive artistic approach through her signature triptych format, where each subject—whether a person or concept—unfolds across three distinct visual treatments that blend symbolism, figurative elements, geometric shapes, and Native American design motifs.
Born Susan Mable Deloria in 1896 at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, Mary Sully came from a family of remarkable intellectual and artistic achievement. She was the great-granddaughter of renowned artist Thomas Sully, whose portrait of Andrew Jackson appears on the twenty-dollar bill. Her sister, Ella Cara Deloria, was among the first Native women anthropologists in the United States, and Sully frequently accompanied her on fieldwork trips to Native communities across the nation. The artistic legacy continued through her nephew, author and scholar Vine Deloria Jr., who wrote the influential "Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto" in 1969.
Despite her extraordinary talent, Sully showed her work only three times during her lifetime, with two occasions being day-long exhibitions at Indian schools in Pipestone, Minnesota, and Flandreau, South Dakota. However, the contemporary art world has recently begun recognizing her significant contributions to Native art theory and practice. Her work was featured in the groundbreaking "Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists" exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019, as well as in an exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum in 2024.
According to Jill Ahlberg Yohe's essay in the "Hearts of Our People" exhibition catalogue, Sully transformed Native art by creating innovative connections between art nouveau, abstraction, and Native art—all movements that were beginning to gain recognition in U.S. galleries during the early 20th century. Yohe noted that "Sully's work reveals a cosmopolitan view of both Native and non-Native worlds, coupling traditional designs in Native art with contemporaneous design, cityscapes, and celebrities."
Philip J. Deloria, son of Vine Deloria Jr., has extensively studied Sully's work and wrote "Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract," published in 2019. In a talk he gave at the Minneapolis Institute of Art earlier this year, Deloria observed that "Mary Sully is having a moment that's quite extraordinary." He noted that besides the current exhibition, which first opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before traveling to Minneapolis, Sully was also featured in "Reverberations: Lineages in Design History," an exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery.
The Minneapolis version of the exhibition features eight works that the museum acquired in 2023, complementing pieces from the Met's collection and loans from the Mary Sully Foundation. One notable acquisition is "Steinmetz," named after mathematician and electrical engineer Charles Steinmetz. This personality portrait demonstrates Sully's innovative triptych approach: the top panel presents a diagram-like representation using curves and arrows to capture the essence of Steinmetz's ideas that led to the development of alternating current (AC). The middle drawing offers a bird's-eye view of electrical current systems, resembling intricate stitchwork, while the bottom drawing strips the concepts down to their most essential elements.
Sully's triptychs often employ different-sized papers for each panel, with each drawing contained within shapes that perfectly complement what she aimed to express. Her subjects ranged from celebrity portraits—including triptychs of Ziegfeld's Follies, Shirley Temple, ballet superstar Anna Pavlova, and Fred Astaire—to explorations of larger societal themes. In her Fred Astaire piece, she consolidates ideas developed in the top two frames, distilling her conception of the dancer into a simplified yet powerful design.
Beyond personality portraits, Sully tackled complex social and political themes through works like "Indian Church," "Titled Husbands in USA," and "Children of Divorce," the latter possibly responding to a 1934 Lady's Home Journal article of the same title. Her most profound work may be "Three Stages of Indian History: Pre-Columbian Freedom, Reservation Fetters, the Bewildering Present," which uses the triptych format to critique colonialism through narrative scene-making that contrasts pre-contact Native communities with the coercive control of boarding schools, reservations, and prisons.
The exhibition reveals Sully as a deeply thoughtful artist who engaged with current events, popular culture, and themes surrounding history and Native identity. Her drawings serve as sophisticated tools for categorizing and processing ideas, creating a beautiful balance between emotion and intellectual calculation. Through her transformational repetition technique, Sully created works that feel both profoundly conceptual and subtly subversive, challenging viewers to reconsider the boundaries between traditional and modern artistic expression. The free exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, located at 2400 Third Avenue South, offers visitors an unprecedented opportunity to experience this remarkable artist's revolutionary vision.
