Counterpublic

It’s official - we are proudly announcing Counterpublic 2026! Our next edition takes place September 12 - December 12, 2026 featuring a new Curatorial Ensemble: Jordan Carter, Raphael Fonseca, Stefanie Hessler, Nora N. Khan, and Wanda Nanibush. For the 2026 edition, we aim to bring more than 250,000 people together in St. Louis from around the world to explore our shared futures: climate and ecologies, education, generative technologies, Native sovereignty, food systems and more. Across its many components, the exhibition will uplift the region, creating direct impact in our communities and sustaining lasting change through our unique model of civic investment and cultural systems building. Our ambitious, globally-oriented curatorial ensemble has already begun working together to interpret and convert a year of community feedback into an exhibition that reflects a joyous and inclusive vision of our city’s futures. In addition to the announcement of our 2026 edition we’re thrilled to introduce our expanded website, designed by @visitorassembly! In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing more on our stories about new features and programs so that you can stay engaged as we lead up to 2026 and beyond. Be on the lookout for our comprehensive community report from our first year of engagement in the coming months and stay tuned for more details about our new geographic and thematic areas of focus for 2026. Visit our brand new site at www.counterpublic.org to sign up for our newsletter and learn more about the curatorial ensemble. Jordan Carter Stefanie Hessler Nora Khan Denver Art Museum Dia Art Foundation Photo by Justin Solomon [ID: A group of five curators stands on the bank of the Mississippi River in front of a steel-truss bridge with a purple tint on the lower edge of the photo.]

STL artists: We want to meet you! Join us on November 13 from 6-8pm for an interactive session with St. Louis artists and the Counterpublic team. This artist-focused networking event welcomes artists of all mediums to TechArtista UCity. Executive + Artistic Director James McAnally and Assistant Curator Charlie Farrell will discuss the St. Louis Artist Database, present the curatorial process, share ways you can get involved, and answer your art-focused burning questions about Counterpublic. Light snacks and beverages will be provided. Register for the event + submit your questions at https://lnkd.in/g7sHtetZ

Calling All Artists: Let’s Build a St. Louis Artist Database! Submit your information to the first St. Louis Artist Database. This crowd-sourced data is a vital part of our efforts to connect with every artist in the region. By submitting your work through our online form, you are becoming a part of a larger network of opportunities. Not an artist? Forward to your friends. It only takes a minute 👇 The repository will house artists’ contact information and websites and will be a reference as we develop future projects. With your approval, we will also share your work with other curators and project partners. We can’t wait to learn more about you! ⭐ Where to start: Submit your information through our online form. This ongoing artist database is for our curators and partners to learn about your work. Wondering if you’re the right fit? Check out our FAQ. ⭐ Where to connect: Attend the upcoming Artist Connect Night on November 13th from 6-8 PM at TechArtista UCity to meet us, meet each other, and learn more about how to connect with Counterpublic as an artist. ⭐ What to share: Help us connect with artists far and wide across St. Louis. Are you an artist or friends with arts and culture people? Tag and send to your friends! Visit https://lnkd.in/g3BvjhsZ to submit to the Artist Database, register for the Artist Connect Night, and access everything Counterpublic.

Introducing Wanda Nanibush, Curator for Counterpublic 2026: “I am very excited to work with Counterpublic because of both the stated commitment to and the actual actions on the lasting impact of the arts on St. Louis. We hope to expand this in 2026 with profound engagements in and with communities where the arts can be a life changing experience. It is this marriage of artistic experimentation and long lasting community impact that is my goal. I would like to see the fun, loving, deep, committed, connected side of St.Louis brought to the fore through art works and performances of Counterpublic.” Based in Toronto, Wanda Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of Indigenous curators, writers and artists that last took place at Venice Biennale. She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her co-authored book Moving the Museum which chronicles some of her groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario as the Inaugural curator of Indigenous Art. We are thrilled to have Wanda on our team for the next edition of Counterpublic! Visit www.counterpublic.org to learn more about Wanda and Counterpublic 2026. Photo captions in comments

Introducing Nora Khan, Curator for Counterpublic 2026: “From my first visit to Counterpublic in 2019, I was drawn into the radical ethos of the triennial: the artists' intimate, thrilling site-specific commissions, the wild ambition and utterly fresh approach to exhibition-making. My curatorial practice is rooted in visionary, fiercely interdisciplinary artists who propose alternative civic futures through their critical work with media, from early radio experiments to today's generative technologies. By rooting my research and curation deeply in the history and present of St. Louis, I hope to see their theories and world-making create broad, rich dialogue far beyond art audiences.” Nora N. Khan is an independent critic, essayist, curator, editor, and educator. Her writing on philosophy of AI, with a focus on incomputable knowledge and the relationship of language to computation, is referenced heavily by practitioners across fields. Her books are “AI Art and the Stakes for Art Criticism” (2025), “Seeing, Naming, Knowing” (2019) and “Fear Indexing the X-Files” (2017), with Steven Warwick. She was the Co-Curator with Andrea Bellini of the Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement 2024, “A Cosmic Movie Camera,” hosted by Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, and curated “Manual Override” at The Shed in 2020. She is currently Arts Council Professor at UCLA in Design Media Arts. We are thrilled to have Nora on our team for the next edition of Counterpublic! Visit www.counterpublic.org to read Nora N. Khan’s full bio. Photo captions in comments

Introducing Stefanie Hessler, Curator for Counterpublic 2026: “As a curator committed to experimental and conceptually rigorous artistic practices that imagine different futures, I’m drawn to Counterpublic’s dedication to put artists first, to listen to the needs and desires of its St. Louis communities, to build infrastructure both materially and culturally, and to create an artistic platform for lasting change. I’m excited to work alongside this brilliant curatorial ensemble and germinate the seeds for sustained and sustainable change through collective learning and unlearning, experimentation, and joy.” Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, and the Director of Swiss Institute in New York. She recently co-curated solo shows by Raven Chacon, Ali Cherri, and Lap-See Lam, as well as a large-scale East Village-wide exhibition titled Energies, which opened in September 2024. She has curated projects included in the 17th MomentaBiennale, Montreal; Gropius Bau, Berlin; Ocean Space, Venice; the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo; the 6th Athens Biennale; and TBA21–Augarten, Vienna. We are thrilled to have Stefanie on our team for the next edition of Counterpublic! Visit www.counterpublic.org to learn more about Stefanie and Counterpublic 2026. Photo captions in comments

Introducing Raphael Fonseca, Curator for Counterpublic 2026: “I look forward to working collaboratively with my colleagues and organizing a triennial that brings together a wide variety of visual artists and creators together, and serves as a vital educational role in making visible the rich history of St. Louis, its cultural layers, and its stories full of joy and trauma altogether. After these two years, I hope to become a different person and a different curator.” Raphael Fonseca is a researcher in curating, art history, art criticism, and education. He works as a curator of modern and contemporary Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum. He is the chief curator of the 14th Mercosur Biennial, to take place in March 2025 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He curated the 22nd SESC_Videobrasil Biennale, along with Renée Akitelek Mboya and Solange Farkas in 2023. He worked as a curator at MAC Niterói (Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, Brazil) from 2017 to 2020. We are thrilled to have Raphael on our team for the next edition of Counterpublic! Visit www.counterpublic.org to learn more about Raphael and Counterpublic 2026. Photo captions in comments

Introducing Jordan Carter, Curator for Counterpublic 2026 - “Having grown up in St. Louis, I am excited to meaningfully contribute to my hometown through reverberating reconsiderations of the intersections of art and place. Within the multisited civic context of Counterpublic, I look forward to working alongside my inspiring co-curators to realize the worldbuilding visions of artists in ways that bridge artistic intent and social impact. Complementing, extending, and collaborating within the city’s vibrant arts ecosystem, I intend to cultivate the possibilities of conceptual and site-sensitive practices, repositioning art from the pedestal to pedestrian space.” Jordan Carter is a curator and co-department head at Dia Art Foundation. He has curated exhibitions of work by stanley brouwn, Tony Cokes, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, Mary Heilmann, Cameron Rowland, and Lucas Samaras, among others. He has held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Carter oversees the preservation of and programming around Dia’s permanent installations, including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76), both in Utah, as well as the stewardship of Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation (2018). We are thrilled to have Jordan on our team for the next edition of Counterpublic! Visit www.counterpublic.org to learn more about Jordan and Counterpublic 2026. Photo captions in comments

Meet our Communications and Events Coordinator, Kristen Oyer! Produced by Roy Uptain, our Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts Fellow #counterpublic #counterpublic2026 #stl #stlouis #stlcommunity #stlartscene #stlcomms TechArtista

Great news to share! Counterpublic has been awarded an ARPA for the Arts Tourism Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis 🎉 Counterpublic will use this historic funding for staffing, marketing, programs, and initiatives that attract more visitors to St. Louis City. Our team is so grateful to RAC for their support! ARPA for the Arts is a collaboration between the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis (RACSTL), Community Development Administration of St. Louis (CDA), and the City of St. Louis. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/grcRSyHr https://lnkd.in/gQXE5GQc #regionalartscommissionofstl #stl #stlouis #stlouisarts #stlarts #stlartscene #missouriarts #midwestart #cityofstl #stlouisisanartstown