Ace gallery director Dyani White Hawk Polk resigns AMRG post

Artist and gallery director Dyani White Hawk Polk with artist Greg Bellanger at All My Relations Gallery; Star Tribune staff photo by Joel Koyama.

Award winning artist and curator Dyani White Hawk Polk has unexpectedly resigned her post as director of All My Relations Gallery (AMRG) in south Minneapolis, effective March 17.

During her four year tenure at AMRG, she combined inclusiveness and administrative savvy with a keen eye for top quality contemporary and traditional American Indian art, the gallery's speciality. Drawing on national contacts, she organized handsome shows of contemporary sculpture, paintings and installations as well as traditional beadwork, birch-bark containers, grass baskets, ledger drawings and jewelry.

Leading AMRG was "an unexpected turn in my career," White Hawk Polk said in an email announcing her plans. It had been "a joy, inspiration, and blessing" to work with the gallery's artists and supporters, she said, but now it was time to "make the leap and transition into a full-time studio practice, chasing my own dream as an artist."

A Sicangu Lakota from Madison, Wisconsin, White Hawk Polk has won awards for her own work at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Art Market and a 2013-14 fellowship in visual art from the McKnight Foundation. Her paintings deftly incorporate Indian motifs (feathers, moccasin shapes) into modernist designs that have been shown at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Bockley Gallery and elsewhere.

After her departure, AMRG's operations will be overseen by Jay Bad Heart Bull, president and CEO of the Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI), and Graci Horne, gallery associate. The gallery is located in a sunny street-level showroom in the headquarters of NACDI at 1414 E. Franklin Av., Minneapolis.