The Box That Mary Left

New episode! In the 1920s and ’30s, Mary Sully makes her way from Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota to New York City and then around the country, making surprising, delightfully abstract portraits of American celebrities: Fred Astaire, Shirley Temple, Amelia Earhart. “Personality prints,” she calls them, though the most intriguing personality they reveal might be her own. A personality and a story that challenges everything you think you know about Native America—and all of America—in the early 20th century.

You can see Mary’s “personality prints” the Minneapolis Institute of Art this summer. Photo courtesy of the Mary Sully Foundation.