Envisioning a shared near future in a time of global upheaval, Coyote Time, Counterpublic 2026 brings together fifty new artistic and architectural commissions presented at public sites throughout the city. Counterpublic’s third triennial presents bold new artist projects, public programs and events, and long-lasting civic initiatives centering urgent crises including climate, education, and immigration. Coyote Time takes its title from artist Alice Bucknell’s commission, a term referring to the moment in a video game when a character is suspended in midair, unsure of what comes next. This moment of anticipation guides the exhibition, where uncertainty creates a space for experimentation and possibility. The exhibition is complemented by a full color catalog published by Inventory Press, a midpoint symposium, performances, talks and other public programs, and lasting civic infrastructural work at each of our key sites.

Jordan Carter joined Dia Art Foundation as curator and codepartment head in 2021. Since then, he has curated exhibitions of work by stanley brouwn, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Maren Hassinger, and Mary Heilmann, among others, for Dia Beacon, and commissioned a new moving-image installation by Tony Cokes for Dia Bridgehampton. In 2025, his projects included presentations of Lucas Samaras’s and Keith Sonnier’s work, a multipart commission by Cameron Rowland, and Renée Green’s first major solo museum exhibition in New York featuring new and historical works, all opening at Dia Beacon. 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). He previously served as associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Carter has also held curatorial and research positions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. He received a bachelor’s in art from Brown University, and a master’s in art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he focused on Fluxus and global conceptual art.

Raphael Fonseca is a researcher in curating, art history, art criticism, and education. He is the curator of modern and contemporary Latin American art at the Denver Art Museum. He holds a PhD in criticism and art history from State University of Rio de Janeiro and is the curator of the Taiwan Pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale. For Fonensca the juxtaposition of different temporalities and how this can trigger contemporary reflections for audiences is crucial in his practice. Humor, absurdity, pop culture, and the notion that an exhibition relates to the ideas of assembly, set design, and spectacle have grown among his research interests. He works with artists from everywhere but with a more significant focus on the ones born and/or based in the so-called “Global South.” In 2025 he was the chief curator of the 14th Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil and his previous curatorial works includes Who tells a tale, adds a tail (Denver Art Museum, 2022); Raio-que-o-parta: fictions of modern in Brazil (SESC 24 de Maio, São Paulo, 2022); Sweat (Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, 2021); To-and-fro (Centro Cultural Bank of Brazil, São Paulo, Brazil, 2019); andthe 22nd SESC Videobrasil Biennale (São Paulo, 2023). He worked as a curator at MAC Niterói (Contemporary Art Museum of Niterói, Brazil) from 2017 to 2020.

Stefanie Hessler is a curator, writer, and the director of Swiss Institute (SI) in New York. Her work centers artists and ideas through new commissions, transdisciplinary collaborations, and experimental formats, often with a focus on ecologies, technologies, and the aim to promote lasting change. At SI, Hessler initiated the curatorial project Spora, which invites artists to transform the institution through environmental institutional critique, alongside operational steps toward climate action. She recently cocurated solo shows by Raven Chacon, Ali Cherri, and Lap-See Lam, as well as a largescale East Village-wide exhibition, Energies (2024). Previously, as the director of Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway, Hessler co-led the research-based exhibitions Attention After Technology (with Art Hub, Copenhagen; State of Concept, Athens; Tropical Papers, and partners at Princeton University and the Université de Paris); Sex Ecologies, including an edited compendium (with Seed Box and MIT Press); and Unweaving the Binary Code, for which she initiated institutional collaborations for the Hannah Ryggen Triennale. Selected projects as an independent curator include the 17th MomentaBiennale, Sensing Nature, Montreal; Rising Tides/Down to Earth, Gropius Bau, Berlin; Joan Jonas: Moving Off the Land II, Ocean Space, Venice; the symposium Practices of Attention, 33rd Bienal de São Paulo; the 6th Athens Biennale; and Tidalectics, TBA21–Augarten, Vienna. Hessler is the curator of the Finland Pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Hessler is the author of Prospecting Ocean (MIT Press, 2019) and has edited over a dozen volumes. She is a founding committee member of the New York chapter of the Gallery Climate Coalition (GCC), and forms part of the On Seeing editorial collective between the MIT Press and Brown University Library. Hessler was recently named among Apollo’s 40 under 40 and ArtReview’s Power 100.

Nora N. Khan is an independent critic, essayist, curator, editor, and educator. She is internationally recognized for her essays and short books. Her notable essay “Towards a Poetics of Artificial Superintelligence” (After Us, 2015) uses critique, fiction, and metaphor as strategy for contending with technological evolution. Khan’s practice extends to a large range of long-term collaborations and “public epistolary” conversations with musicians, artists, theorists, and performers. She was an editor at Rhizome, a guest editor of HOLO, and as editor-in-residence at Topical Cream. Her works have been published in 4Columns, Rhizome, Village Voice, Flash Art, and books for Serpentine Galleries, Chisenhale Gallery, Centre Pompidou, and Swiss Institute. Her work has been supported by the Visual Arts Foundation and the Crossed Purposes Foundation, the Thoma Foundation Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and residencies at La Becque, Eyebeam, and Fogo Island Arts.

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe Independent curator, image and word warrior, and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, Canada. Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of Indigenous curators, writers, and artists that last took place at the Venice Biennale. She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her coauthored book Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO (Goose Lane Editions, 2023) which chronicles some of her groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario as the Inaugural curator of Indigenous Art. She has curated survey, group, and retrospective exhibitions including Robert Houle Red is Beautiful (NMAI, Smithsonian, Washington, 2021), Rebecca Belmore, Facing the Monumental (2019), and Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971–1989 (AGO). She received her master’s in arts in visual studies from University of Toronto where she has also taught graduate courses. She is the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the PhD program in art history at CUNY in the Graduate Department of Art History. Nanibush has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history, feminism and sexuality.

James McAnally is the executive and artistic director of Counterpublic. Previously, McAnally was the cofounder and director of The Luminary, an expansive platform for art, thought, and action based in St. Louis. He additionally serves as the executive editor and cofounder of MARCH: a journal of art & strategy and was 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, Queens Museum, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation with Ballroom Marfa, Kadist Art Foundation, and the Artist’s Institute and has served as a Visual Arts panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and numerous other fellowships. 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), Brooklyn Museum, Getty Research Institute, and more. His writing has been published in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Artnet, BOMB, Art Journal and others. McAnally is a recipient of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing.

Counterpublic is a civic exhibition that weaves contemporary art into the daily life of St. Louis, addressing pressing questions, historical legacies, and the possibilities of the city’s future through responsive artistic projects. Counterpublic is a beacon of creative thinking and community engagement—an inclusive art platform that expands social, political, and civic horizons and models an altered art world. Counterpublic will rotate to key focus areas around the region with each edition, seeding transformative cultural commissions towards generational change. Counterpublic was founded by The Luminary in 2019 and incorporated into an independent platform in 2021.