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“Toward an American Indian Abstract: The Art and Politics of Mary Sully”

Dr. Phil Deloria to discuss the politics of Native American artist Mary Sully.

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Milo Bail Student Center Ballroom—Dodge Campus – This is the twentieth annual lecture for the History department at UNO’s endowed lecture series which honors the legacy of a former student Richard Dean Winchell. This year’s Winchell lecturer is Dr. Philip J. Deloria of Dakota Sioux heritage will deliver a public talk at UNO on November 3, 2016 entitled “Toward an American Indian Abstract: The Art and Politics of Mary Sully.” Between the late 1920s and mid-1940s, Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully created a unique portfolio of art, completely unknown to contemporary American or American Indian art history. Sully’s art is modernist in both art and design, a reflection of Indigenous women’s traditions of the Northern Plains. As an exceptional artist, Sully’s art is both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually challenging. Deloria’s talk will offer a close reading of Sully’s art and provide a case that her art significantly alters the canon of American and American Indian art in the twentieth century.

Mary Sully’s art is modernist in both art and design, a reflection of Indigenous women’s traditions of the Northern Plains. As an exceptional artist, Sully’s art is both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually challenging.

Philip J. Deloria holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, where he holds appointments in History, American Culture, Environmental, and Native American Studies. His research focuses on the social, cultural, and political histories of the relations between American Indians and the United States. His prizewinning 1998 book Playing Indian, traced “Indian play” from the Boston Tea Party to the New Age movement, while his 2004 book Indians in Unexpected Places, examined the ideologies surrounding Native peoples in the early twentieth century and the ways Native Americans challenged popular myths through sports, travel, automobility, film, and musical performance. Deloria is a former president of the American Studies Association, a past trustee of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A book signing is scheduled to follow Professor Deloria’s talk and the event will be located in the Milo Bail Student Center Ballroom on the UNO Dodge Campus. This event is free and open to the public, parking will be free and open in UNO’s East Garage. For further information, please contact Dr. Kent Blansett at kblansett@unomaha.edu or the History Department at 402-554- 2593.