The kapémni form, an abstract Lakota symbol broadly recognizable to Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, consists of two mirrored triangles balanced in the center at their tips in an hourglass shape. The lower one represents the physical world, the upper one the sky and spiritual realm. The form was traditionally rendered in porcupine quillwork, beadwork and parfleche painting on garments and objects made by Native women.

“The kapémni really is a worldview based in Lakota philosophy that underscores our connectedness across all humanity, all plant life, all life period,” said Dyani White Hawk, a Minneapolis-based artist who is Sicangu Lakota, of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

She has integrated the kapémni motif in different media and at increasing scale and innovation over the last 15 years. “Utilizing it in my own work serves as a personal reminder over and over again to live by our values.”

White Hawk, 48, has recently received a surge of recognition in the art world for her multidisciplinary work that puts abstraction long used by the Lakota people in active conversation with elements of mid-20th century American painting including abstract expressionism, color field, hard-edge and minimalism.

Awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2023 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024, White Hawk has high-profile commissions in progress at Kennedy International Airport and Portland International Airport in Oregon, and her work has been collected by dozens of major museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.

Strips of beadwork at Dyani White Hawk’s studio in Minneapolis, Sept. 22, 2025. White Hawk incorporates strips of bead, and other beadwork, into many of her pieces (Ben Brewer/The New York Times)

Walker exhibit

Now, a midcareer survey has opened in her hometown, Minneapolis, at the Walker Art Center called “Dyani White Hawk: Love Language,” on view through Feb. 15, with more than 90 paintings, works on paper, video installations, objects incorporating quillwork and beadwork, and several new sculptures and mosaics. It was organized in collaboration with the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where the show will travel next year. The two institutions bridge the Plains homelands of the Oceti Sakowin cultural group comprising the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations whose territory long predates that national boundary.

“A driving force within what I do is about making sure that Native voices are included and heard and celebrated in our mainstream public art spaces to the equal level of all our counterparts in the field,” said White Hawk in a video interview.

She aims to remind people “of the artistic history that existed on this land base before colonization and the ways that that has been intertwined with other communities after colonization.”

Art history incomplete

Of mixed Lakota and European ancestry, White Hawk grew up in Madison, Wis., where she was raised predominantly by her mother, who was born on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Sandy White Hawk was adopted at 18 months by white missionaries, who moved with her to Wisconsin. As an adult, she reunited with her Lakota family and brought her children back to South Dakota for ceremonies throughout their youths.

“My mom was in that era of often forced, manipulated, very systematic removal of children,” said White Hawk, whose mother founded the First Nations Repatriation Institute and has been an activist in reconnecting separated families.

White Hawk studied art and United States and Tribal history from Indigenous perspectives at Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, where she received a degree in elementary education in 2003. She learned native art history and had her first painting classes at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, graduating in 2008 with a bachelor of fine arts.

After these tribal colleges, she described experiencing “culture shock” when she began graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There she was introduced to Western art history that omitted discussion of everything she had studied before. Independently, she researched names that came up in class, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and was instinctively drawn to their abstract language, she said. She was not surprised to then learn they had been influenced by Indigenous art forms.

White Hawk was simultaneously “falling in love with abstract expressionism and troubled by the narrative that abstract painting in the U.S. began in the ‘40s and ‘50s in New York at the Cedar Tavern,” said Siri Engberg, the Walker’s senior curator and director of visual arts who co-organized the survey with Tarah Hogue of the Remai Modern. From the artist’s student works to today, Engberg added, “Dyani is thinking about ways that she could counter that narrative and, more importantly, foreground the legacy of Lakota abstraction.”

The artist Dyani White Hawk works at her studio in Minneapolis, Sept. 22, 2025. Motifs of repeated patterns are frequently part of White Hawk’s work. (Ben Brewer/The New York Times)

An artistic language

In her early work, White Hawk juxtaposed dual artistic lineages. She alternated stripes painted gesturally to summon artists like Rothko, Sean Scully or Frank Stella with stripes painted in neat rows of short, parallel marks to mimic the practices of Lakota quillwork and beadwork (sometimes incorporating actual quills and beads on the surface).

In her larger “Quiet Strength” series, begun in 2016, White Hawk laid down expressionistic brushwork in gold, silver or copper. On top, she painted thousands of vertical marks in horizontal bands, coalescing into the kapémni shape or other geometric Lakota symbols, with the flicker of the underlying metallic pigments creating an aura of radiance and value.

“Dyani always says that beauty is medicinal,” said Hogue, adjunct curator of Indigenous art at Remai Modern. “Through color, through the materials, she really opens up these rich and sometimes difficult conversations about what people know about the art history and even the history of the land that they’re on.”

“Infinite We,” White Hawk’s newest sculpture making its debut at the Walker, realizes the kapémni form completely in the round. Rising 10 feet tall and five feet in diameter, the surface of the two conjoined cones is a mosaic of colorful triangles in enamel on copper that optically form shifting pinwheels and embody the idea of the kapémni as a vortex.

The motif will reappear in the guise of Oregon’s Mount Hood, represented in a monumental mosaic to be unveiled next year at the Portland International Airport. Stretching 55 feet long and 9 feet high, White Hawk’s design presents the majestic mountain silhouette adorned with a tribal beaded cape, like a snow cap, and mirrored in the sky. A striking horizon line separates sunrise and starscape.

“The whole composition is a kapémni,” said White Hawk, excited by the increasing opportunities she’s had to translate her work into permanent public installations. “I’m really grateful to be able to play this big and create this thing that honors that landscape but also stays within the realm of my artistic language and the way I see the world.”

‘Dyani White Hawk: Love Language’

What: More than 90 paintings, works on paper, video installations and objects incorporating quillwork and beadwork.

Where: Walker Art Center Galleries 1, 2, 3; 725 Vineland Pl., Minneapolis.

Tickets: Free-$18, available at walkerart.org

Accessibility: Elevators, lifts, wheelchairs and other services are available.

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There was little consternation in Minnesota when the state’s favorite professional sports team decided not sign a veteran quarterback to tutor, or at least babysit, J.J. McCarthy through his first real NFL season.

It seemed Vikings fans were ready for the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft to take the reins of a team whose fortunes seemed to be resting on the performance of its quarterback. This despite the fact that McCarthy, a national championship winner at Michigan, missed his entire rookie season because of a knee injury.

The Vikings could have re-signed Sam Darnold, a revelation as he defibrillated his career with a sensational year while leading Minnesota to a 14-3 record in 2024. But it would have been expensive, more than $40 million for a one-year franchise tag, and the Vikings were committed to McCarthy long term.

Then Aaron Rodgers, looking for one last shot at winning his second Super Bowl, threw his hat into the ring, meeting with Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell over the summer to see if there would be a fit. From the outside, it seemed like a good idea. Nope.

Now the Vikings, who spent big on free-agent deals last spring to create a soft landing for McCarthy, are 3-3 and in last place in the NFC North Division after losing to the Philadelphia Eagles, 28-22, on Sunday at U.S. Bank Stadium.

Sunday’s loss was largely because Carson Wentz wasn’t good enough, unable to coax his team to touchdowns on 5 of 6 drives inside the red zone and giving the Eagles their second touchdown with a pick six.

“I thought he competed,” O’Connell said.

He did, and let’s be clear. This is not a Carson Wentz issue; it’s a Vikings management issue. General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, in fact, did well to sign Wentz — idle after not being picked up by anyone after last season — the week after training camp came to a close. But he waited too long. Wentz didn’t have a training camp with anyone.

On Sunday, Wentz nearly willed the Vikings down the field as they rallied to make it a one-score game late in the fourth quarter, twice converting third-and-10 plays by scrambling for 16 and 12 yards. But after T.J. Hockenson failed to corral Wentz’s pass in the back of the end zone, the Vikings settled for a field goal that made it 28-22.

Justin Jefferson probably would have caught that pass and given the Vikings a little more life than Will Reichert’s 29-yard field goal, but it was aimed at a tight end and not one of the NFL’s best two or three wide receivers.

It would be disingenuous to actually pin Sunday’s loss on Wentz, especially when the Vikings’ defense was torched by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, who passed for 326 yards and three touchdowns — the first a 37-yard touchdown pass to A.J. Brown on fourth-and-4 that made it 7-0, the second a 79-yarder to Brown on their first second-half possession that made it 21-6.

The Vikings held the Eagles’ struggling rushing attack to 45 yards on 23 carries, yet trailed the entire game because almost every time the Eagles needed a big play, the Vikings’ secondary complied.

Cornerback Isaiah Rodgers, on the wrong end of the Eagles’ 79-yard touchdown, fell on his sword, saying, “I put it on me. I put the whole team on me. I’ve gotta make those plays.”

Hey, there was plenty of blame to go around.

Center Blake Brandel was called for holding to negate a third-down touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor (Reichard field goal) and snapped the ball over his quarterback’s head for a 22-yard loss to kill another touchdown opportunity (Reichard field goal).

Josh Metellus was burned by Brown on the Eagles’ first touchdown, and Rodgers was beat by Brown on a 45-yard, fourth-down pass deep into Vikings’ territory that essentially ended the game with 1 minute, 35 second remaining.

Wentz is just the easiest target because of the pick six and an intentional grounding penalty that ended a touchdown bid with another Reichard field goal instead. That’s 11 points in a six-point loss.

Under the circumstances, Wentz has probably exceeded realistic expectations. He certainly has been better than McCarthy was in his two starts before being lost to a high-ankle sprain. It just hasn’t been good enough — and it only magnifies the team’s big offseason decision to spend more than $200 million on free agents, then to give the keys to a quarterback who is, for all intents and purposes, a rookie.

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PARIS — The doors of the world’s grandest museum had been opened to the public for just 30 minutes when two burglars were lifted up onto a second-floor balcony on the building’s south side.

Their faces concealed, they rode a monte-meubles, a truck-mounted electric ladder that is a common sight on the streets of Paris, where it is used to ferry bulky furniture through the windows of apartments.

Once there, they used grinders to break a window, setting off the security alarms, and burst inside the gilded Galerie d’Apollon of the Louvre Museum, where a prized collection of royal jewels and crown diamonds is held in a succession of cases.

There they smashed two cases, sounding more alarms, and snatched eight precious objects, including a royal sapphire necklace, a royal emerald necklace and its matching earrings, and a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III, France’s 19th-century ruler.

The burglars went back down the ladder to a road shouldering the Seine and made their getaway with two waiting members of their team on motor scooters.

In all, it took no more than seven minutes.

It was the most brazen — and possibly the most costly — theft ever staged at the Louvre, which houses the country’s most prized art collections. French politicians publicly mourned the loss and railed against those they deemed responsible, loudly demanding to know how such a thing could happen at the world’s most famous museum at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

“It seems like a scenario out of a film or a television series,” said Ariel Weil, the mayor of central Paris, where the Louvre is located.

President Emmanuel Macron said in a message on social media that the theft was “an attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our History.”

Then he made a vow: “We will recover the works, and the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Everything is being done, everywhere, to achieve this.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation.

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The authorities said investigators were poring through evidence that included objects abandoned by the thieves and security camera footage.

No one was hurt, the French Ministry of Culture said, though the Paris prosecutor’s office said the staff had been threatened by the thieves.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

It looked as if tight end T.J. Hockenson had made an unbelievable touchdown catch on Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium to pull the Vikings even closer as they tried to complete a comeback against the Philadelphia Eagles.

As the celebration spilled over onto the sideline, however, it was announced the play was under review. That ultimately resulted in the call on the field being overturned as it was determined that Hockenson did not complete the process of the catch. The decision was ultimately made by the NFL from its replay center in New York.

Asked about the play after the game, Hockenson was visibly upset, revealing that multiple refs came up to him afterward and told him they had it as a catch.

“I don’t understand how New York can call in and be like, ‘That’s not a catch,’” Hockenson said. “There was no evidence that it wasn’t. I think it’s ridiculous. Especially when every ref came up to me after and said, ‘We had that as a catch.’”

In a pool report, the NFL’s vice president of instant replay Mark Butterworth said it was determined that Hockenson lost control of the ball, which resulted in the call on the field being overturned.

“The ball hit the ground,” Butterworth said. “Then he regained control of the ball.”

That wasn’t how Hockenson saw it as he watched the replay on the big screen.

“There was nothing to overturn it,” Hockenson said. “I was out there. I felt it. My hands were under the ball.”

As the process was unfolding, head coach Kevin O’Connell said he was not privy to the conversations going on between the NFL from its replay center in New York and referee Bill Vinovich on the field.

“I did not get any clarity,” O’Connell said. “The main update that I got was incomplete pass.”

Meanwhile, veteran quarterback Carson Wentz lauded Hockenson for his effort, noting that he didn’t get a good look at the replay that was being shown on the big screen.

“All I know is I can throw a better ball,” Wentz said. said. “I can make it a little easier on him.”

Though it wasn’t technically the difference for the Vikings in a 28-22 loss to the Eagles, it certainly could’ve made for a different game script in the final minutes.

“It is what it is,” Hockenson said. “We’ve got to move on.”

On further review

Kevin O’Connell said Sunday was waiting to hear an explanation for a holding call on center Blake Brandel that negated a touchdown pass and forced the Vikings to settle for a field goal in their 28-22 loss to the Eagles.

The Vikings were going for it on fourth-and-1 late in the second quarter when Brandel got defensive lineman Moro Ojomo to the ground before Carson Wentz threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor. Brandel was called for holding, making it fourth-and-11 and forcing Minnesota to settle for Will Reichard’s 34-yard field goal to make it 14-6.

Afterward, Brandel’s review of the call could be lip-read on TV, and he didn’t agree with it. After the game, however, he relented.

“I’ve just gotta better,” he said. “Can’t do that. It cost the team.”

It appeared on replay that Brandel had hold of Ojom’s jersey under his right pad, but O’Connell said he wasn’t entirely convinced.

“It’s a normal technique,” the coach said. “It’s called the trap, when you knock a guy’s hands down.”

Brandel acknowledged he didn’t initially think he had held Ojomo, saying, “Maybe not in the moment, but I see what the refs see in that. It is what it is. I see what they saw.”

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