Mary Sully: Modern Native
Metropolitan Museum of Art, until January 12, 2025
The Met hosts the first solo exhibition of drawings by the late Yankton Dakota artist Mary Sully (1896-1963), who combined the traditional aesthetics of the Dakota and other indigenous groups with the Art Nouveau style and popular culture of her time. Largely unknown until the 21st century, Sully is now famous for his “personality prints” – abstract triptych portraits of people like Fiorello La Guardia, Babe Ruth and Gertrude Stein. Sully was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota and had a complex family history. His mother, Susan Pehandutawin, was also an artist, as was his great-grandfather, painter Thomas Sully, who created the 1824 portrait of Andrew Jackson that has been used on the $20 bill since 1928. His grandfather, Alfred Sully, was a military officer who fought in several wars against the Native Americans. Along with her sister, the anthropologist Ella Deloria, Mary Sully traveled throughout the United States, drawing inspiration for her own work from the arts of the many Native American groups they visited.
Elena Goukassian
View of the facility Projects: Tadáskíathe first individual exhibition of the Brazilian artist in the US
Photo: Jonathan Dorado, © MoMA
Projects: Tadáskía
Museum of Modern Art, until October 14
The centerpiece of this exhibition by the mononymous Brazilian artist Tadáskía is Mystic Black Bird Mystic Black Bird (2022), an unbound book composed of 61 drawings and texts in English and Portuguese that narrate the journey of discovery and transformation of the titular bird. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the work earlier this year, and for this exhibition (co-organized by the Studio Museum in Harlem), the artist created kaleidoscopic murals and sculptural installations to accompany and amplify mystical black birdfantastic pictures of.
The exhibition marks Tadáskía’s first solo exhibition in the United States and follows a major exhibition at last year’s São Paulo Biennale, where an equally dazzling installation combining site-adapted murals and sculptures with works on paper made a strong impression. “This special collaboration is a remarkable opportunity to champion an emerging voice in contemporary art and furthers the Studio Museum’s engagement with artists of African descent globally,” says Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum.
Benjamin Sutton
Profile of a striped man Shirt (undated) by Frank Walter, the late antique artist and polymath
Photo: Kenneth Milton; courtesy of Barbara Paca
Frank Walter: To capture a soul
The Drawing Center, until September 15
For the late Antiguan artist Frank Walter’s (1926-2009) first solo exhibition in the United States, The Drawing Center has assembled a selection from the polymath’s wide range of creative output. In his lifetime, Walter created thousands of paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and audio recordings delving into the history and politics of the Caribbean and incorporating the themes of slavery, colonialism, race and identity. Walter had a complicated relationship with his own identity as a descendant of both slaves and plantation owners, which became more strained after he became the first person of color to manage an Antiguan sugar plantation. This was further compounded by his later encounters with structural racism when he moved to Europe for several years in the 1950s. In addition to his visual art, Walter was an avid writer, leaving behind a 50,000-page archive of poetry, stories, trees genealogies, maps and even sheet music. The title of the exhibition comes from someone who witnesses the artist’s work: “With just a few lines,” observed an acquaintance, “he would capture your soul.”
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FUTURE 2000 Garbage Rock (1983); the Bronx Museum show explores the artist’s work since the 1970s
Collection of Patrick Lerouge
FUTURE 2000: Breaking Out
The Bronx Museum, September 8-March 30, 2025
Leonard Hilton McGurr, a fixture of the New York City graffiti scene in the 1970s, better known as FUTURA 2000, rose to prominence in 1980 with his infamous rest painting, an abstract composition of neon tones across an entire subway car that made it look as if a giant hole had been punched through the side of the train. Since then, he has been one of the most enduring and inventive artists to move from graffiti to the gallery world. This retrospective, FUTURA 2000’s most comprehensive to date in its hometown, brings together paintings, archival materials, prints, drawings, sculptures, studies, site-specific installations and more. It will cover his early street work and sci-fi paintings of the 1980s and 1990s through to his most recent graphic and abstract compositions, showcasing the graffiti pioneer’s enormous range. “The unique visual language of FUTURA 2000, which unites street art, abstract expressionism and fashion, places it alongside its peers such as Jean-Michel Basquiat within the canon of art history,” says Klaudio Rodríguez, executive director of the museum.
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