Juanita McNeely's Hometown Survey at SLAM and CAM St. Louis

A Two-Venue Hometown Survey

A two-venue museum survey of the painter Juanita McNeely has opened in her hometown of St. Louis, folded into the city's Counterpublic Triennial. The exhibition runs simultaneously at the St. Louis Art Museum (SLAM) and the nearby Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM). At SLAM, a long corridor in the European painting wing leads to a single canvas by McNeely, a portrait of a laboring mother swathed in chartreuse, positioned alongside works by Picasso, Andre Derain, and Max Beckmann. McNeely, who was born in Ferguson, Missouri, and studied at Washington University in St. Louis, grew up admiring the paintings lining that wing.

A Market Still Catching Up

Most of the roughly dozen works on view are on loan from her gallery's unsold inventory.

That detail underscores the lag in recognition McNeely experienced during her lifetime. She died in 2023 at 87. Her best-known work, Is It Real? Yes It Is! (1969), which depicts her illegal abortion, is owned by the Whitney and is not on view in St. Louis. The show does include one exception: Triskaidekaptych (1986), a 13-panel work on view at CAM, otherwise belongs to an unnamed private collection. All but three of the works in the survey remain unsold.

Painting Vulnerability and Resilience

McNeely's work often depicts women balancing precariously, frequently spindly and bald. As an art student in the 1950s, she was diagnosed with cancer. She later became a wheelchair user after a 1982 spinal injury. Her painting Moving My Chair (2019) shows legs nearly twice the length of the torso, emphasizing strain and strength. In Triskaidekaptych, 13 panels loop and fold scenes of pleasure and pain without resolution, just after her injury when doctors warned large paintings would be a challenge. McNeely mastered anatomy only to break its rules, as in flagrantly flexed toes across nearly every foot she painted.

Ambiguity and Art History

McNeely's references reach back to Chaim Soutine, who painted slaughterhouses while keeping kosher. In one panel of Triskaidekaptych, a toe is hoisted from the ceiling, the rest of the figure an illegible mass of guts and bones. The survey places her alongside artists on society's margins, including Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Rosa Bonheur. Three ceramic vessels at SLAM prompt a linear reading that McNeely's scenes resist.

What the Show Reveals

The current presentation is not a full retrospective. A fleshed-out show including her greatest hits, such as the Whitney-owned Is It Real? Yes It Is!, remains to be staged. For now, the St. Louis survey offers a concentrated look at an artist whose market presence is still developing, with most exhibited works drawn from unsold gallery inventory.