Mary Sully: Native Modern
March 15, 2025 - September 21, 2025
Gallery 276
Free Exhibition
Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota, Mary Sully was a reclusive artist who, between the 1920s and 1940s, created highly distinctive works informed by her Native American and European ancestry. This first solo exhibition of Sully’s groundbreaking production highlights recent Mia acquisitions, works that complicate traditional notions of Native American and modern art.
Major support for Mia’s presentation provided by Lorraine R Hart.
Researcher Talk
Philip Deloria on "Mary Sully: Native Modern"
Watch a conversation with Philip Deloria, a history professor at Harvard University, as he explores Mary Sully’s eclectic style as an expression of her grounding in Plains aesthetics and material culture. Deloria also discusses her emergence as a newly recognized artist immersed in the principles of both Native arts and American modernism.