James McAnally is a curator, critic and editor whose disparate work proposes prefigurative institutional practices, the critic-as-strategist, and publishing as processional protest.


James McAnally is the Artistic + Executive Director of Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition based in St. Louis. He is a co-founder and former Executive Director of The Luminary, an expansive platform for art, thought, and action based in St. Louis, MO. McAnally also serves as the editor and co-founder of MARCH: a journal of art & strategy, was the editor and co-founder of Temporary Art Review, an international platform for contemporary art criticism that focused on artist-run and alternative spaces, and is a founding member of Common Field, a national network of independent art spaces and organizers.

McAnally has presented exhibitions, talks and lectures at venues such as the Walker Art Center, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation with Ballroom Marfa, Kadist Art Foundation, The Contemporary (Baltimore),  School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Kansas City Art Institute, INCA, Transformer, Washington University in St. Louis, and Moore College of Art and Design and has served as a Visual Arts panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, and numerous others.

McAnally’s writing has appeared in publications such as Art in America, Art Journal, Hyperallergic, OEI, Terremoto, and Pelican Bomb, and his publications are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and Brooklyn Museum. McAnally is a recipient of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing.

Writing
Curating
Institution-Making
Speaking

Email: james(at)counterpublic.org
Twitter: @jamesxmcanally
Instagram: @jamesxmcanally