Despite being the subject of the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, Mary Sully: Native Modern, Mary Sully (Yankton Dakota, 1896–1963) wasn’t known as a great artist during her life. She lived a quiet existence as a member of a prestigious family—composed of political and spiritual leaders, an author, and the portraitist Thomas Sully (1783–1872) — from the Standing Rock Reservation, which lies across the northern and southern Dakota state borders. Mary spent much of her life as a companion to her sister, Ella Deloria, who supported the duo with her work as an ethnographer. She occupied a portion of her time creating art on paper with colored pencils and ink.
Sully’s artistic expression yielded around 134 individual vertical triptychs that display what former ANTIQUES editor-in-chief Elizabeth Pochoda has described as “Indigenous modernism.” They intertwine congruent shapes and Native motifs with a sprinkling of Western popular culture through celebrity-inspired titles such as Babe Ruth (c. 1920s–40s) and Fred Astaire (c. 1920s–40s). These unique “personality prints,” as Sully called them, illustrate how the two worlds surrounding her— Indigenous and European-American cultures— impacted her life as a Dakota woman in the early twentieth century.
These paneled pieces were rarely exhibited during the artist’s life and were put away in storage upon her death in 1963. However, after being re-discovered inside a suitcase underneath a staircase, her artwork found a new audience through the acclaimed book Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract by her great-nephew, scholar Philip J. Deloria. This text broadcasted Sully’s story across the art world, and now the artist is receiving another long-due recognition in Native Modern. “The Met has given Mary Sully an indelible position in American art and Native American art by purchasing 25 of her works,” says Pochoda, “seeing to their proper restoration, displaying them beautifully with the kinds of wall labels that illuminate without interrupting our experience of this thrillingly original artist.”
Among the entrancing examples at Native Modern is Sully’s geometric Gertrude Stein (1847–1946) (c.1920s–1940s). This triptych presents a kaleidoscope of robin egg blue circles and rose-like shapes that meld into one another as the eye descends the piece. In these panels, Sully relies on the interplay of negative and positive space to recall the traditional patterning of Dakota cultural attire and textiles. The artist then ties this Native influence with the work of American writer Gertrude Stein, specifically to her famous phrase, “A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose,” which was first featured in the 1913 poem Sacred Emily and later in the book Geography and Plays (1922). Even when stylized, modernized, or simplified–as in Sully’s drawings–a rose is still a rose.
Although Sully’s name was forgotten by the fine art world for many decades, exhibitions like Native Modern ensure that people now and in the future can appreciate her work. “For many years, I’ve considered Mary Sully to be one of those unacknowledged geniuses who we know must be out there in the world somewhere but who never receive much notice,” explains her great-nephew Philip. “So it is immensely gratifying to see her work hanging on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Mary Sully: Native Modern • Metropolitan Museum of Art • to January 12, 2025 • metmuseum.org
