What are the opening hours?

Wednesday 12pm - 5pm Thursday 11am - 5pm Friday 11am - 5pm Saturday 11am - 5pm

The Luminary

Call Directions Website Contact the museum

The Luminary is an incubator for new ideas in the arts founded in 2007 as a forum for artistic research, production and presentation.

The Luminary is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit founded in 2007 as a forum for artistic research, production and presentation, conceived in response to both our immediate and international community, alongside our audiences, and in dialogue with artists.

10/24/2026

Upcoming program: TOTEM: As Monument & Archive. A book talk by Erin Turner (Erin Turner).

TOTEM: As Monument & Archive examines the shifting perceptions of aesthetics, Native representation, and transhistoric remembering through the lens of Ed Galloway’s Totem Pole Park, an artist-built environment in Foyil, Oklahoma.

The book brings together research and projects from artists, curators, activists, historians, politicians, and journalists, who consider site through the lenses of the monument and the archive focused primarily on Oklahoma, although representative as the discourse of a nation.

Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026  Time: 11 AM - 12 PM

Free and open to the public. RSVP by visiting the link in our bio. 🔗

Erin Turner will discuss the public project that brought this book into life and the contemporary collaborations that come into conversation with a not-so-distant past.

Erin Turner is a site-specific installation artist whose itinerant, research-based practice spans sculpture, photomontage, painting, tapestry, walking, writing, and participatory archives. Drawing especially from newspapers, local archives, and sustained engagement with particular places, Turner layers personal and collective narratives onto the landscape. Her work addresses questions of sovereignty, preservation, biodiversity, and environmental struggle while giving form to histories and relationships that are often overlooked or rendered invisible.

Erin Turner is a participant in The Luminary’s 2026 Open Call Residency (Climate Futures cohort).

Upcoming program: In the flow  A video installation and artist talk by collaborators Nina Barnett (nina barnett) and Jeremy Bolen (Jeremy Bolen).

In the flow is a video installation and artist talk by artist collaborators Nina Barnett and Jeremy Bolen that considers St. Louis as a site shaped by overlapping histories of material, environmental and human movement.

In tracking evidence of flow, this work engages with languages of containment, sediment, channeling and circulation that structure the city, from water infrastructure and the Mississippi River to the intersecting movement of industrial materials, nuclear waste, petroche

10/22/2026

Another gala? Groundbreaking.

We’re skipping the speeches, the silent auctions, and the $500 plates. You can still dress up, though.

No VIPs, assigned seating, or particular interest in behaving ourselves! It’s a fundraiser, after all. Just not that kind.

See you at the anti-gala. ;)

HOUSE PARTY November 12, 7 PM–midnight 

$25 gets you in. Give more if you can. All drink profits benefit The Luminary.

Tickets in bio. 21+.

10/21/2026

✨ NOVEMBER FIRST THURSDAY ✨🥤 11.5.26

ease into November on cherokee street at another first thursday : galleries, studios, shops, and independent spaces staying open late throughout the neighborhood

art / vintage / food / music / and more. everything within walking distance.

thurs, november 5, 5–8 pm

grab a drink along the way:  El Leñador Bar & Grill  'ssippi  tschüss LA TERRAZA Mexican Restaurant & Bar  Yaquis 🍕  The Wh***ey Ring    La Casa de los Jugos  Zephyr Bar + Salon  The Saturn Lounge  Bluewood Brewing  Days

10/20/2026

This winter, we’re launching a new free program series as part of Cherokee Street First Thursdays.

Join us for monthly installments of THE CENTURY OF THE SELF, Adam Curtis’s landmark documentary series exploring how our desires, identities, and understandings of freedom have been shaped by the forces of psychology, politics, and consumer culture.

Each month, we’ll gather to watch, discuss, and consider what these histories reveal about the present, and how we might use them to imagine what comes next.

We begin Thursday, November 5, with Part One: Happiness Machines, tracing the emergence of public relations and the use of psychoanalysis to shape mass consumer culture.

Film at 6 PM, followed by discussion at 7 PM. Free and open to all. Snacks and beverages available, and outside food is welcome.

Come watch, question, and think together. Link in bio to reserve your seat.

10/15/2026

HEAVY DELAY is a visual and sonic talk where Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s Signal Interludes becomes a relay for writer and researcher Sean J Patrick Carney to track extractive material economies across the Andes and the Midwest.

Sean J Patrick Carney is a writer, composer, and researcher in Portland, Oregon. His essays, criticism, and interviews have appeared in Aperture, frieze, High Country News, Artforum, Vice, Southwest Contemporary, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and elsewhere. He is the host and producer of Time Zero, a podcast about the nuclearized world.

HEAVY DELAY is free and open to the public. Reserve your spot by visiting the link in our bio.

Date: Thursday, October 22  Time: 6:30 PM - 8 PM Location: The Luminary

Photo credit: Sydney

10/14/2026

In Signal Interludes, an LED display records the movement of raw materials via pulley systems over the course of the exhibition, creating a cumulative archive of transmission, disruption, and exchange.

“Signal Interludes is ultimately about the tension between connection and disconnection, the infrastructures that make circulation possible, whether what is circulating is a physical commodity, a natural resource or a piece of information.” - Ximena Garrido-Lecca

Ximena Garrido-Lecca’s Signal Interludes, curated by Stefanie Hessler and commissioned in partnership with Counterpublic, is on view at The Luminary through December 12.

GALLERY HOURS:
Thurs: 5-8 PM
Fri: 12-6 PM
Sat: 12-4 PM

Photo credit: Tyler Small, courtesy of Counterpublic.

10/13/2026

Planning a gathering this fall or winter?

The Luminary offers flexible spaces on Cherokee Street for meetings, workshops, weddings, dinners, celebrations, performances, and other events.

The building offers 3,000 square feet of high ceilings, a built-in bar, and raw-space feel.

Renting our spaces directly supports our exhibitions, residencies, and artist programs.

Fall and holiday dates are now available. Learn more and inquire at the link in our bio.

Photo credit: Marina May Schleicher and Nick Schleicher’s wedding, photographed by Reuben Hemmer Reuben Hemmer

10/08/2026

The Luminary presents HOUSE PARTY: an anti-gala benefit for non-commodifiable art practice ;)

After years of tired pomp and circumstance, it’s time to get real. The old guard is changing. And we’re here for it.

NO DINNER. NO TABLES. NO AUCTION. NO VIP. Just artists, friends, drinks, dancing, and a really good party in support of The Luminary.

We’re taking over Tschüss for the night. 🖤

HOUSE PARTY Thursday, November 12 7 PM–midnight Tschüss, 2847 Cherokee St.

Featuring a live performance by the Dhoruba Collective and a late-night set by DJ Limewire Prime.

$25 gets you in. Giving more keeps artists paid, exhibitions free, and The Luminary doing what it does best. All drink profits benefit The Luminary.

The Luminary doesn’t need a gala. We need a house party.

Tickets are live now, link in bio. 21+.

STLEvents SupportArtists

10/06/2026

The Luminary invited award-winning photographer Mario Gallucci to lead a three-day Art Documentation Photography Intensive from November 21–23.

Designed for artists and photographers, the intensive moves through photographing difficult objects and installations, lighting, post-production, portfolio development, pricing, and working with artists and institutions, culminating in an on-site session at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.

November 21–23, 2026
The Luminary + Pulitzer Arts Foundation
Led by Mario Gallucci Mario Gallucci

You can either register for classes individually or sign up for the entire intensive.

Limited to 8 participants

Swipe to learn more about the specific classes.

10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Sat, Nov 21: Photographing the Exhibition: The Luminary Arts

Hands-on documentation in the gallery with Mario. Installation and exhibition views Individual artworks and details Site-specific and large-scale work Perspective and architectural distortion Mixed natural and artificial light Building an effective shot list Working efficiently on location.

02:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Saturday, November 21: Lighting the Difficult Object

A technical workshop focused on challenging documentation scenarios. Setup in Luminary black box space. With wall and seamless paper setups. Topics: Paintings and two-dimensional work Glass, glare, and reflective surfaces Sculpture and dimensional work Supplemental lighting for a space with bad existing lighting Color accuracy and white balance Large-scale artworks Reproduction photography vs. installation documentation Essential equipment and lighting setups

10:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Sunday, November 22: From Capture to Delivery

Participants meet offsite for a quick session of image capture. Then regroup at The Luminary for a session on editing those files and other files shot on Saturday. Topics: Ingest and file organization Lightroom workflow Selection and editing Perspective correction Color correction and consistency Masking techniques for smoothing difficult lighting Simple compositing Export settings File naming and archiving Client delivery Creating a faster capture-to-delivery workflow

02:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Sunday, Novem

10/02/2026

Did you know that becoming a member at The Luminary gives you discounts at The Luminary and ticketed partner events?

Become a member at The Luminary to gain access to:

📕15% off The Luminary’s bookstore, merch and bar purchases
🎨 Special access to exhibitions and programs
🚪Behind-the-scenes looks at what we’re working on
💡More opportunities to connect with artists and ideas shaping The Luminary

Members of the Luminary who register for Mario Gallucci’s Art Documentation Photography Intensive form November 21–23 will receive a 30% discount when they enroll.

Membership helps us support ambitious new work by artists, pay artists for their labor, and keep contemporary art accessible to everyone who walks through our doors.

Memberships start at $5 a month and are tax-deductible. Learn more by visiting the link in our bio.

Address

2701 Cherokee Street
St. Louis, MO
63118

Opening Hours

Wednesday	12pm - 5pm
Thursday	11am - 5pm
Friday	11am - 5pm
Saturday	11am - 5pm

Telephone

+13147731533

Website

http://www.theluminaryarts.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when The Luminary posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Museum

Send a message to The Luminary:

Want your museum to be the top-listed museum in St. Louis?