Miranda July will deliver the Bluhm-Kaul Keynote at AIR Aspen on July 29, appearing in conversation with performer and choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili. The talk is scheduled for 2 p.m. at Aspen Meadows, Paepcke Auditorium, and is part of the Aspen Art Museum’s AIR 2026 program, which runs July 27–31 in Aspen. Registration is required, and the museum notes that shuttle service will operate from the Aspen Art Museum to the venue.
According to the AIR program materials, July is being presented as an artist, performer, writer, and filmmaker whose work moves across film, literature, performance, participatory practice, and digital media. The keynote will focus on her bestselling novel 'All Fours' (Riverhead, 2024), which the program describes as a work that reflects on intimacy, technology, social life, desire, transformation, and self-reinvention. The museum’s description also frames the novel as one that follows an unnamed artist who leaves a cross-country road trip to stay in a local motel, where distance from home opens up new ways of seeing herself.
July has built a career across multiple forms, and the AIR description places 'All Fours' alongside earlier projects including the feature debut 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' (2005), the participatory website 'Learning to Love You More' (2000–2009), and books such as 'No One Belongs Here More Than You' (2007), 'It Chooses You' (2011), and 'The First Bad Man' (2015). The institution’s framing emphasizes recurring themes in her work: awkwardness, desire, loneliness, imagination, and the social scripts that shape everyday encounters.
The keynote arrives in a program that AIR Aspen has organized around a cluster of talks and public events during its 2026 festival week. The Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes are made possible through a major gift from Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul. AIR 2026 is presented under the title 'Figures in a Landscape,' and the July 29 keynote is one of several events listed for Aspen Meadows, Paepcke Auditorium.
Okpokwasili, who will join July in conversation, is identified in the program as a performer and choreographer with a multidisciplinary practice. AIR’s page also notes that her collaborative project with Peter Born, sweat variant, will present 'adaku, part 2' at AIR 2027, co-commissioned by Aspen Art Museum. The listing places July’s appearance in dialogue with an artist whose own work also spans performance, choreography, and writing.
AIR Aspen’s 2026 schedule includes other keynote events in the same series. Julie Dash is listed for July 30 at Aspen Meadows, Paepcke Auditorium, and Matthew Barney is listed for July 31 at the same venue. The museum’s AIR materials also note that public registration opens July 15 for non-members, while members receive early booking access according to membership level. The July 29 keynote remains centered on July’s long-running interest in the emotional and social textures of contemporary life, now anchored by 'All Fours' and her conversation with Okpokwasili at Paepcke Auditorium.
