Lillia McEnaney is a museum anthropologist and freelance arts writer living and working in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Based at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, her curatorial projects include the renewal of the museum’s permanent exhibit, Here, Now and Always (Winter 2021), The Brothers Chongo: A Tragic Comedy in Two Parts (April 2019-March 2020), and the upcoming A Place in Clay (April 2020-March 2021).
Lillia’s writing has appeared in Museum Anthropology and Religious Studies and Theology: Interdisciplinary Studies in Religion, as well as Hyperallergic, The Magazine by Southwest Contemporary, SAPIENS, Anthropology News, The Jugaad Project, SAFE, and the Center for Art Law. She is the Blog Manager for the Council for Museum Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association.
Lillia was the co-chair of the Local Arrangements Conference Committee for “Museums Different,” the second biennial conference of the Council for Museum Anthropology, held in Santa Fe in September 2019. In addition to “Museums Different,” she has presented at multiple international conferences, including the Council for Museum Anthropology’s “Museum Anthropology Futures” Inaugural Conference (Montreal, Canada), the European Association for the Study of Religions Annual Meeting (Helsinki, Finland), the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting (Denver, CO), and the University of Oklahoma’s “New Directions in Native American Art History and Museum Studies” Andrew W. Mellow Foundation Symposium (Norman, OK). She has been both a panelist and a moderator for various public programs at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and a two-time guest lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Hamilton College.
Lillia is the recipient of multiple grants and awards from Hamilton College, New York University, the American Association of University Women, and the Council for Museum Anthropology. She has participated in workshops, field programs, and academic programs in London, Edinburgh, Greece, and Stobi, Macedonia, as well as with the Yale University Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage.
Her academic work centers on anthropology of and in museums, decolonizing museum and archival practices, and material and visual culture in New Mexico.
Lillia received an MA in Museum Studies from New York University in 2019 and a BA (cum laude) in Archaeology and Religious Studies from Hamilton College in 2017. She is originally from Newtown, Connecticut.