The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art made last-minute revisions to a traveling show of women, queer, and trans artists. Museum leadership and a co-curator differ on what happened.
SCOTTSDALE—Curators for the expansive transfeminisms exhibition that premiered at Mimosa House gallery in London last year arranged to tour the show in Arizona, but by the time it opened at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in 2025, the exhibition was transformed in significant ways with a new title, shorter run, and an altered artist line-up. The reasons aren’t entirely clear—because a co-curator and the museum’s leadership have vastly different perspectives on the shift.
Transfeminisms unfolded over the course of five installments at Mimosa House between March 8 and December 14, where it was described as “a major survey touring show that brings to light a multiplicity of urgent, pressing and ongoing issues faced by women, queer and trans people across the globe.”
In Scottsdale, the exhibition became There are other skies. The show’s focus shifted to “a multiplicity of urgent, pressing, and ongoing topics faced by female-identifying people worldwide.” And several works exhibited in London, including some that might be considered the most controversial, weren’t included in the line-up.
For example, the original transfeminisms exhibition featured Cassils’s Ghost, a 2013 four-channel sound installation recorded during a performance of Becoming an Image, the transgender artist’s social sculpture involving a massive mound of clay.
The exhibition was violently edited in Scottsdale.
Likewise, the London show included the installation Penises also Cry (2021) by Myriam Omar Awadi, a sound piece with a sex toy embedded in a sculptural penis form, as well as an immersive installation by the SaVĀge K’lub collective whose work explores racial and gender stereotypes.
Gerd Wuestemann, CEO and President of Scottsdale Arts—the private nonprofit organization that oversees SMoCA as part of its contract-based management of the city’s arts and culture resources—says a variety of logistical, cost, timing, communication, and art availability issues resulted in certain works not being shown in Scottsdale.
More specifically, he’s detailed reasons the works by Cassils, Awadi, and SaVĀge K’lub aren’t on view, ranging from space considerations to customs requirements.
For Daria Kahn, founder and curator of Mimosa House, the changes that occurred and the process that enabled them were both problematic.
“The exhibition was violently edited in Scottsdale,” says Kahn, who co-curated transfeminisms along with Christine Eyene, Jennifer McCabe, and Maura Reilly.
“The initial plan was that transfeminisms would be even more ambitious at SMoCA with possibly more artists, bigger works, and new commissions,” says Kahn. “Later we learned that the museum was seeking a reduced version of the exhibition and making other changes.”
Wuestemann disagrees with Kahn’s characterization of the changes and says they were purely pragmatic. “Any exhibition is adapted to a given location, based on spaces, timelines, and budgets,” he says.
The changes become particularly apparent when you compare details in the museum’s October 8, 2024, press release to how the show ultimately came together. In that document, the show is titled transfeminisms and the list of participating artists includes each of those noted above.
The release stated that transfeminisms would be shown “as a whole” across all five of SMoCA’s galleries from March 1 to August 24, 2025. One gallery would become a “Forum” space open to community groups such as “an organization of women in business or a collective from the LGBTQIA+ community” plus a site for film screenings, poetry readings, open mic nights, and other programming.
I know it’s challenging when people don’t understand a word and come at it with fear.
Instead, the show opened on February 22, 2025, and runs through June 1, meaning it was shorted by over two months. It fills just three galleries and there is no “Forum” space (that gallery is being used for another exhibition). As for the new title, Wuestemann says it came from language in an Emily Dickinson poem.
The original title used the prefix “trans” to imply “across, beyond, through or on the other side of,” according to SMoCA’s early press materials. Using the plural “feminisms” suggested the various ways feminism has been defined in different places and times.
“I can’t speak to the reasons for the name change, but I know it’s challenging when people don’t understand a word and come at it with fear,” says co-curator McCabe. “The title was meant to be provocative but it may have been too hard for people to digest or become a target in some way.”
Why the artist line-up changed isn’t entirely clear. Wuestemann says the museum rarely does touring shows so it’s not unusual that they would modify an exhibition. But he also cites a change of museum leadership.
McCabe spent six years as director and chief curator at SMoCA, which is how the museum landed the exhibition tour. She also secured grants to help make it happen—from National Endowment for the Arts, Terra Foundation for American Art, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
McCabe resigned in October to accept another museum position in California. According to Wuestemann, SMoCA shortened the exhibition’s run so a new director and chief curator would be able to choose what to show next. Yet the museum clearly took a different approach with overlapping exhibitions, which it scheduled to run through August 10 and September 7, 2025.
Kahn says the transfeminisms curators were sidelined after McCabe left the museum in November. “We felt very unprotected as curators,” recalls Kahn. “We were just told about the changes and we didn’t have any ownership of our own creation.”
According to Wuestemann, the whole “SMoCA team,” including assistant curator Keshia Turley, decided how to adapt and realize the show. Turley was one of three assistant curators for transfeminisms, so she’s well-versed in how the exhibition evolved. She hasn’t responded to requests for comment.
All the artists worked really hard on this project, and the public needs to see this art.
To appreciate the original show, it’s helpful to consider its historical roots. Reilly conceived the transfeminisms show several years ago, intending to create a conversation with the Global Feminisms exhibition she co-curated with Linda Nochlin, which was positioned as “the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present.”
That show happened in 2007 in conjunction with the opening of Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, where one of the most iconic holdings is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party installation honoring over 1,000 women.
Today Kahn is thinking about the ways transfeminisms speaks to the political, cultural, and social climate in the U.S. and beyond. “It’s incredibly upsetting to see human rights violations happening on such a global scale and the rollback in trans people’s rights,” she says.
On a more local scale, the Arizona legislature has introduced several anti-transgender bills this session, and the Scottsdale City Council recently voted to cut funding for city DEI initiatives.
“Even with the changes, we still wanted artists to be able to show their work,” reflects Kahn. “All the artists worked really hard on this project, and the public needs to see this art.”
