Hally McGehean

Hally makes fine, pop, and wearable art and designs what she calls “feminist, humanist, and zoophilist” interiors. Her clients include the Whitney Museum of American Art, Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Molly Ringwald, Nicola Formichetti, Bre Pettis, Charles Desmarais, Charles Ardai, Patsy Kahn, and Sharon Hoffman. Her work has been photographed by Terry Richardson and Nick Knight and appeared in Playgirl, Marie Claire, Elle Decor, Teen Vogue, New York, Paper, Complex, and Bitch Magazines.

Hally was the winner of the 2010 Chelsea International Fine Art Competition and her 2011 runway show on the High Line was named one of the nine highlights of New York Fall Fashion Week by Entertainment Weekly. Hally’s large-scale laminated magazine mosaic , “Bananas,” following an exhibit at the Boston’s Children Museum, was purchased by Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who added it to their permanent collection, curated to brighten the days of their patients.

Hally was commissioned by The Whitney Museum of American Art to create a retail collection of her Rings of Things that sold out in 24 hours. Her Meta Outfit was exhibited in the brutalist Madison Avenue building before the museum moved downtown.

Before segueing into visual art, Hally was a performer for 30 years with principal roles in the Broadway productions of Annie and Peter Pan. She recorded the hit Christmas single, “Let Me Be Annie for Christmas,” was seen on the soap opera “As the World Turns,” and was featured in a commercial for cable television with Michael Jackson.

Hally studied philosophy at Columbia University and Shakespeare at the British American Drama Academy, Balliol College, Oxford, where her mentor, the RSC director Barry Kyle called her “a Shakespearean actress working in the 99th percentile of her field.”

Hally served on the board of directors of the Isles of Shoals Association, Portsmouth, NH for ten years and has raised over $10,000 for cancer charities running the NYC, Paris, Berlin, and Boston marathons and $2500 for Save The Rhino International for not running the London Marathon because she broke her foot again.

In November 2012, Hally co-founded Flood the Art Market, raising $13,000 for NYFA’s Emergency Relief Fund, helping artists affected by Hurricane Sandy with shows at Miami Basel and the Cristin Tierney Gallery in Chelsea. In 2021 she produced a free, 6-hour, musical Pride Festival in Orange Country, New York, the Town of Wallkill’s first Pride celebration.

Hally wrote a musical with Joe McGinty called, “Upping My Numbers.” Joe and Hally premiered the show at Dixon Place as part of their Works in Progress series and performed it in residency at Pangea, the alt-cabaret supper club on the Lower East Side. The musical tells the story of Hally's sex life, partner by partner, in a reverse burlesque, and takes place entirely in her bed. 

Hally performs with the Losers Lounge at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, is finishing illustrating a children’s storybook she wrote called “The Blawnut House,” and is restoring a Victorian farmhouse where she is decoupaging the walls.

Hally’s Obama Bag will be included in the permanent collection of the Barack Obama Presidential Center Museum in Chicago.

Hally lives in the Hudson Valley with her partner, Troy, her son, Henry, her two pit bitches, Walrus and Mud, and her eight hens, Gunta, Gertrud, Ilse, Lou, Zizi, Sylvie, and Misty.