Becoming Mary Sully: Reclaiming a Modern Native American Artist
Philip Deloria
Harvard University聽
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Time:聽5:00 - 6:30pm
Location:聽Gasson Hall 305
Reception following in Gasson Hall 306
Co-sponsored with the American Studies Program, the Institute for the Liberal Arts, the History Department, the Art History Department, the Provost's Office, and Women's and Gender Studies.
鈥淔rom a cardboard box to the Met鈥�: that鈥檚 how the聽New York Times聽described the current Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition聽Mary Sully: Native Modern, on display through early January 2025. In this talk, Sully鈥檚 grand-nephew Philip J. Deloria will describe the work of this transformative Dakota artist, which boldly mixes Great Plains women鈥檚 aesthetics, early twentieth-century modernist traditions, 1930s popular culture, and ethnographic anthropology into stunning and intelligent visual art. The newspaper was correct: Sully鈥檚 work has moved from complete obscurity to the galleries of major American museums, and Deloria will detail the process behind its surprising journey.
Philip J. Deloria (Dakota descent) is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University, where his research and teaching focus on the social, cultural and political histories of the relations among American Indian peoples and the United States. He is the author of several books, including Playing Indian (Yale University Press, 1998), Indians in Unexpected Places (University Press of Kansas, 2004), American Studies: A User鈥檚 Guide (University of California Press, 2017), with Alexander Olson, and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract (University of Washington Press, 2019), as well as two co-edited books and numerous articles and chapters. Deloria received the Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 1994, taught at the University of Colorado, and then, from 2001 to 2017, at the University of Michigan, before joining the faculty at Harvard in January 2018. Deloria was a long-serving trustee of the Smithsonian Institution鈥檚 National Museum of the American Indian. He is former president of the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for American History, an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of numerous prizes and recognitions.
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Deloria, Philip J. Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2019.
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Schmittou, Douglas A., and Michael H. Logan. 鈥淔luidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art.鈥� American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2002): 559鈥�604. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4128503.
Seaton, Melynda. 鈥淣ative American Art Today in the Great Plains: An Overview of the Exhibition 鈥楥ontemporary Indigeneity: Spiritual Borderlands.鈥欌�� Great Plains Quarterly 37, no. 1 (2017): 37鈥�56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44683825.
Vizenor, Gerald. 鈥淎merican Indian Art and Literature Today: Survivance and Tragic Wisdom.鈥� Museum International 62, no. 3 (2010): 41-51. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0033.2010.01732.聽
On July 25, 2024, The New York Times published by Holland Carter about Native American artist Mary Sully. The piece tells the story of Sully鈥檚 artwork and its legacy. Carter notes that Sully鈥檚 family almost discarded her work after her death at the age of 67 in 1963. The cardboard box full of drawings was shuffled between relatives until Philip J. Deloria, Sully's grand-nephew and Harvard History professor, stumbled upon it. Thanks to Deloria, most of the collection is now on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sully used a number of mediums, including colored pencils and ink drawings. She also made triptych drawings portraying famous cultural figures who reflected the time and culture of Native life. The MET now displays her triptych drawings: the top panel is illustrational, the middle panel follows the theme of the illustration but reflects modernist geometric abstraction, and the final panel is composed of traditional Native American art, specifically quillwork. The MET鈥檚 display resurrected the unique and personal style of Sully鈥檚 art and brought it into the mainstream with the help of Deloria.