Visitors to “Mary Sully: Native Modern” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art may wonder about how Mary Sully would react to seeing her first solo exhibition, over 60 years after her death.
In season five, episode 10 of “Doctor Who”, the Doctor and his sidekick Amy Pond bring the iconic and embattled artist Vincent Van Gogh to a present-day gallery in Paris exhibiting his work.
Van Gogh, who created an immense and vibrant oeuvre despite struggling to sell a single painting, is stunned to see visitors in the crowded gallery admire and take photos of his work, and cries tears of joy.
Sully, a Yankton Dakota artist from Standing Rock Indian Reservation, South Dakota, blended the popular culture of the 1920s through the 1940s with traditional Dakota designs, producing one-of-a-kind colored pencil triptychs of vibrant colors and hypnotizing patterns that have only recently been uncovered.
“In the early 20th century, Sully quietly revolutionized Native and American art by forging connections between these seemingly distinct genres, ultimately transforming the field of American art,” said Katie Luber, the president of the Mia and director of the Nivin and Duncan MacMillan director, in a Feb. 6 press release.
In collaboration with the Mary Sully Foundation and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Native Modern” presents various pieces that Mia acquired in November 2023, according to the press release.
Sully’s most distinctive works are her personality prints, in which she provides a uniquely Indigenous perspective by translating the personalities and life stories of pop culture icons of the day into her signature triptychs.
In “Shirley Temple,” Sully translates the child actor’s bright brown eyes, golden curls and bubbly personality into concentric circles. The motif continues into her drawing of a blue flannel cape with Dakota beadwork and explains the connection in a handwritten caption.
“When blue flannel was first introduced, little girls wore capes of it, decorated with beads, like this one.”
The handwritten captions make Sully’s presence in the work feel tangible, showing how she used art as a lens through which to see the world.
While the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s take on Sully’s work revolves around her time in New York City, one goal of the Mia exhibition was to localize Sully’s art. According to Valéria Piccoli, the Ken and Linda Cutler Chair of the Arts of the Americas, this involved working with Sully’s great-nephew Philip J. Deloria to incorporate Indigenous objects into the show.
“(Sully) is a part of the culture that the Twin Cities are embedded in,” Piccoli said.
Sully’s work also provides a valuable Indigenous perspective on life in the early 20th century, when Indigenous people had little to no political power and continued to be forcibly assimilated into white American culture.
Sully also created triptychs that visualize her social commentary with satire as compelling as her artistry.
Piccoli named “Titled Husbands in the USA” as a favorite, which pokes fun at European men who marry wealthy American women.
In the top panel, three men suck from the same milk bottle labeled with dollar signs, their straws branching out to connect cracked and broken hearts. The second panel zooms out to reveal a kaleidoscopic pattern of this complex dynamic, which the third panel translates into a stained-glass window that also blends Dakota quillwork motifs.
According to Piccoli, it uses an observational sense of humor befitting of Sully’s notably shy personality.
Sully’s artwork has gone unnoticed and misrepresented for decades. A looping Paramount Pictures promotional film from the 1940s playing in the gallery falsely identifies Sully as being from New Mexico, even though she can be seen drawing in full Dakota regalia.
Deloria, who published his great aunt’s biography “Becoming Mary Sully” in 2019, first encountered the work stashed away in the attic while unpacking them from a box with his mom. He didn’t think twice about it until two decades later, according to the Harvard Gazette.
Considering all that is known about Sully, it feels wrong to assume she made her art for people to see. She never tried to sell her art, unlike Van Gogh — instead, she used it as her own form of expression and interpretation of the world around her.
“People should come to discover an original artist with beautiful work that speaks to Dakota heritage,” Piccoli said. “The more time you give yourself to spend with the art, the more you’ll get out of it.”