Please join us on Thursday, May 28, at 6 PM for a conversation between historian and author Philip J. Deloria, great-nephew of Mary Sully and author of Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, and curator Jenelle Porter.
This event is free and open to the public.
Mary Sully (b. 1886, Standing Rock Reservation, South Dakota, d. 1963, Omaha, Nebraska) born Susan Mabel Deloria, was a Yankton Dakota artist active from the 1920s through the 1940s. The significance of Sully’s personality prints was not recognized until her great-nephew, historian Philip J. Deloria authored a monographic study Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract, in 2019. Mary Sully was recently featured in An Indigenous Present, curated by Jenelle Porter and Jeffrey Gibson, at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. The exhibition travels to the Frist Art Museum in Nashville (June 26–September 27, 2026) and the Frye Art Museum in Seattle (November 7, 2026–February 14, 2027). The Metropolitan Museum of of Art presented Mary Sully: Native Modern in 2024, the first solo museum exhibition dedicated to Sully’s work.