BILOXI, MS.- Dusti Bongé Art Foundation (DBAF) announces its summer exhibition tracing the emergence of Mississippi’s native daughter as an artist in her own right following the death of her husband Archie Bongé in 1936. An academically trained artist, Archie died two years after the couple—who married in 1928—settled in Dusti’s hometown of Biloxi with their young son in 1934. Coming Home: Becoming an Artist comprises 34 works on paper and paintings of which 19 are by Dusti along with sketchbook drawings.

From the early 1920s to the early 1930s, Dusti was pursuing a career in the theater in Chicago and Archie was building his reputation as a painter in New York City. Once married, they started making frequent trips to visit family and friends on the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans. On these trips, Archie would often sketch and paint local scenes and Dusti started occasionally joining him in this activity.

Archie built a light-filled studio behind their home and continued his artistic pursuits. Dusti started spending more time working alongside him in the studio and accompanying him on outings to capture local scenes of the vibrant coastal city. Recognizing his wife’s innate talent, Archie encouraged her. She heeded his advice to forego art school, learning instead from observation and experimentation. Devastated by his tragic and untimely death from ALS, Dusti picked up his paint brushes and embarked on her storied, lifelong practice.

Whereas Archie’s drawings and paintings were mostly rendered in traditional academic style, Dusti’s almost immediately took on a more modern quality. Although her very early pieces are figurative, they are not rendered in any kind of strictly realist manner.

Ligia M. Römer, Ph.D., DBAF Executive Director, said, “In a poignant celebration of Archie and Dusti’s brief years together working side by side, yet also in remembrance of the solemn circumstances leading up to Dusti’s launch as a professional artist, we are presenting this selection of some of Archie’s last works and some of Dusti’s earliest. After Archie’s passing, Dusti continued to hone her skills through hours of observing and sketching anything and everything around her, whether inside or outside, expansive scenes or intimate settings. We anticipate providing visitors with a moving experience—an artist who came home, faced personal loss, and emerged a pioneering Modernist.”

Dusti Bongé 1903-1993

Dusti Bongé, widely considered Mississippi’s first Modernist painter, absorbed the lessons of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism while remaining deeply rooted in the rhythms of the Gulf South. Her canvases oscillate between dreamlike figuration and gestural abstraction, drawing inspiration from the Gulf Coast’s natural and built environments as well as the inner worlds of dreams, visions, and the psyche.

The Dusti Bongé Art Foundation

The Dusti Bongé Art Foundation (DBAF/the Foundation) promotes the artistic legacy of Dusti Bongé, Mississippi’s pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter, through exhibitions, conservation, scholarship, and education. Established in 1995 in Biloxi, the artist’s hometown, the organization preserves and promotes her extensive and impressive oeuvre and is dedicated to increasing public awareness of and access to her work.

Since its inception, the Foundation has been engaged in advancing scholarship about the artist and cataloguing and conserving her artworks in its collection including the development of a digital catalogue raisonné to debut in 2028. In addition to placing several significant works with national institutions including the Mississippi Museum of Art, Morris Museum of Art, and National Museum of Women in the Arts, DBAF organizes exhibitions and provides loans to art institutions. Its on-site gallery showcases selections of work that explore Bongé’s evolution from her earliest representational landscapes and portraits to experiments with Surrealism to her Abstract Expressionist masterworks. The Foundation’s holdings include an extensive selection of her work in a variety of media, including oil and acrylic paintings, watercolors, pen and ink sketches, mixed media works, tempera on paper, and ceramics.

DBAF’s gallery in the historic Creel House, 370 Meaut Street, Biloxi, MS, is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am until 5 pm. Admission is free.

For more information, please visit dustibonge.org.

Coming Home: Becoming an Artist will be on view June 30 – November 10, 2026.