McAnally is the Artistic + Executive Director of Counterpublic, a triennial civic exhibition based in St. Louis reimaging the role of art in public life. 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, Kadist Art Foundation, Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Contemporary, School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Kansas City Art Institute, INCA, Transformer, and Washington University in St. Louis 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, Artnet, Hyperallergic, OEI, Terremoto, VICE and The Brooklyn Rail, and his publications are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Smithsonian Museum of American Art, LACMA, the Art Institute of Chicago and Brooklyn Museum. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Guardian, ABC News, Washington Post, and numerous other publications. 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
Instagram: @jamesxmcanally