Juanita McNeely Painted Abortion’s Messy Truth
ARTnews reviews a two-venue hometown survey of feminist painter Juanita McNeely—born in Ferguson, Missouri, educated at Washington University in St. Louis—presented at the St. Louis Art Museum and continuing at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis as part of the city’s Counterpublic Triennial. McNeely, who died in 2023 at age 87, is described as drawing on influences such as Max Beckmann and other German Expressionists while depicting women’s bodily vulnerability and caregiving with unsentimental intensity. The article highlights works including a portrait of a laboring mother and the painting Moving My Chair (2019), noting McNeely’s anatomical command and deliberate distortions. It argues that her relative lack of recognition stems partly from how her experiences—such as a cancer diagnosis as a student in the 1950s—complicated prevailing narratives of empowerment in later feminist art discourse.
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This story was covered in Museum Expansions, AI Book Carnage, and Power Plays