Minnesota artist Dyani White Hawk wins MacArthur 'genius' grant

Minnesota artist Dyani White Hawk has won a prestigious, $800,000 MacArthur Foundation grant. Known as the "genius" award, this year it's been bestowed on just 20 individuals.

But White Hawk sees a wide web of people involved.

There are the fellows, past and present. The folks who have supported, valued and honored her artistic practice. The people who have beaded her canvases alongside her.

"That web is so immense, I don't think it's possible to fully understand it," said White Hawk, 46, who is Sičáŋǧu Lakota. "I just feel like it's generations worth of sacrifice, love, prayer and work.

"And I'm grateful for it all."

White Hawk's artworks stun and shimmer. They also shine a light on the Indigenous heart of modern art. The Shakopee resident works with beads and paint, drawing from Lakota abstractionism and European art traditions.

She is revealing "the underrecognized yet enduring influence of Indigenous aesthetics on modern and contemporary art," according to the foundation. "In both her finished objects and art-making process... [she] centers ideas of connectedness — within community and family, across generations, and between craft and fine art."

ArtNews named her large-scale work, "Wopila | Lineage," one of 12 "standouts" of last years' Whitney Biennial in New York City. Eighteen people helped bead that piece. Her husband built a bridge so White Hawk could perch above its panels, sketching its geometric design.

This year's MacArthur Fellows also include a composer, a hula choreographer and the sitting U.S. poet laureate, whose work is published by Minnesota's own Milkweed Editions. There are also entrepreneurs, social scientists and a hydroclimatologist studying global warming.

After the group gathered on a Zoom call Wednesday, White Hawk felt the weight of the experience — in a good way.

"Every single one of them is doing profoundly moving, beautiful, phenomenal work," she said. They all were shocked, surprised, dumbfounded. They all pointed out the larger communities beyond themselves. "Yet I'm listening to them being like, 'Of course it's you.' "

The nominations are anonymous, so the call comes as a surprise.

In late August, White Hawk, her husband and their two daughters were at a Starbucks in Buffalo, N.Y., where they had traveled for her daughter's lacrosse tournament. At first, she figured the call was spam, "so I was rude."

But once she understood who it was, she stepped outside. She started to cry. Then she shared her joy with her family.

The Walker Art Center is planning an exhibition of White Hawk's art in October 2025, said spokeswoman Rachel Joyce. Yet to be formally announced, the mid-career survey will cover 15 years of White Hawk's work and collaborations — painting, photography, video and mixed-media sculpture.

The Walker has recently exhibited two other MacArthur grantees: Carolyn Lazard and Raven Chacon.

Another local connection: The nonprofit Milkweed Editions published U.S poet laureate and new MacArthur fellow Ada Limón's book, "The Hurting Kind," in 2022. (Their roster also includes two 2022 MacArthur recipients — "Braiding Sweetgrass" writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and "The Home Place" writer J. Drew Lanham).

Also a teacher, Lexington, Ky.-based Limón has written six books of poetry, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for her "The Carrying." She's scheduled to appear at the University of Minnesota on Nov. 8.

The $800,000 stipend is spread out over five years and can be spent however the grantees see fit.

Asked how she might use it, White Hawk laughed.

"I don't know," she said.

The news was still so new. And she doesn't have her next five years planned out. But she's started thinking.

"I have been working really hard to build a sustainable studio practice that supports me, my family and everybody who's working in the studio in a way that feels good, healthy, balanced.

"This helps with that."

At the end of a phone conversation Wednesday afternoon, she paused. "I'm really grateful," she said, naming more folks in that multigenerational web of people.

"I'm damn grateful for the tribal colleges I attended," she then said. Before earning an master of fine arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a bachelor of fine arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, White Hawk got her associate of arts degree from Haskell Indian Nations University.

"I don't know how many tribal college graduates are in this cohort of people," she said. "I feel really grateful to be a tribal college graduate and a MacArthur Fellow."

Staff writer Chris Hewitt contributed to this report.