Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is facing criticism for an exhibit — not necessarily for what’s in it, but for what’s not. The show is called "There are Other Skies," and the name itself has also become the subject of controversy.

Originally called "Transfeminisms" when the exhibition was on display in London, the version at SMoCA has a new name, and does not include some of the pieces from the original. One of the original co-curators of the exhibit is not happy about the changes.

Lynn Trimble, an independent arts writer, has written about this in a piece that appeared in Southwest Contemporary. She says when the exhibit was on display in London, 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.”

But the focus of the Scottsdale version is described as “a multiplicity of urgent, pressing, and ongoing topics faced by female-identifying people worldwide.”

Trimble joined The Show to talk about this, starting with how different what’s on display at SMoCA than where it’s been displayed elsewhere.

Full conversation

LYNN TRIMBLE: There are quite a few works that are similar. The majority of the works were brought over from, you know, were also shown in London. However, there are several works that were shown in London that are not shown here, and of course all the works in the show are significant, but the works that are not shown are significant pieces. So I think you lose something by not having those works included.

To be fair though, I should also note that SMoCA has added a couple of works, so you do get a different, you know in my opinion it's just a different exhibition because it had sort of a different curatorial process coming in late in the game and you've got some changes in artists, but you won't see, it's not a completely different exhibition in terms of the, the artworks that people can see.

BRODIE: Was it always planned to be a little different in Scottsdale than it was in London?

TRIMBLE: What we know about the the original plan in Scottsdale was conveyed through early press materials, and those came from Mimosa House, which is the gallery in London that originated the show, and also initial press releases from SMoCA, both of them indicated that the show in its entirety would be moved from London to Scottsdale, but that was not the case.

There were changes made after that initial announcement.

BRODIE: And we should also point out that the name of the show itself is different, right?

TRIMBLE: Correct. The show was originally called “Transfeminisms,” trans meaning across broad to suggest this broad way of looking at feminisms as a plurality, meaning different ways of looking at feminisms through time and space, geography, perspective, and it was changed in Scottsdale to "There are Other Skies," which is, I'm told titled after an Emily Dickinson poem.

So yes, there are differences in terms of the title.

BRODIE: So what are folks with Scottsdale Arts saying about why some aspects, including the name, but also some of the works, have changed even from when it was first announced that the show would be coming here?

TRIMBLE: Great question. And I should note that there were also some other artists that they were hoping to bring in. They had an artist from Israel and artists from China, some other artists that didn't end up coming to the Scottsdale show as was originally planned.

What they're saying is that the person who's been the spokesperson on this for SMoCA has been Gerd Wuestemann, which you would expect he's the head of Scottsdale Arts. And he has said, the word he uses often is pragmatism, right?

These were pragmatic changes, they were driven by factors, multifactorial decision making, right? It was their curator who left the museum in the fall as they were beginning to look at bringing these works over.

They had different space and budget and time constraints that they were working with and so it's all, from Scottsdale's perspective, it was all a very practical bit of decision making that is not dissimilar from other types of changes that could happen during a curatorial process.

BRODIE: I guess having one of the curators leave is probably unforeseen, but it's not like SMoCA's space suddenly changed, right? They knew all that, like what kind of space they had and how much art they could fit into it when they first decided to take the show, right?

TRIMBLE: Correct, and the show was three years in the making, so it wasn't something that was thrown together very quickly. That's a great point. They do have five galleries. The original intent was to include all five galleries in this exhibition.

One of them would have been a room, kind of a forum space, where they would have had community groups come in and meet and do programming to support some of the themes in the exact exhibition including, concerns for women, queer and trans artists, and instead they put it in three galleries, and I could note, having seen the exhibition on more than one occasion, that there are places, even in the three galleries where there is blank walls and space where more works could have been included.

BRODIE: I wanna read a quote to you that you include in your story about this from one of the co-curators of this exhibit who says, “The exhibition was violently edited in Scottsdale.” That seems like pretty strong language.

TRIMBLE: It is, and that's by Daria Khan, and she is the founder and curator of Mimosa House, the London gallery, and I think that with all the work. This was a process by four curators, three assistant curators, and then close to a dozen global advisors who recommended artists to be included.

And my sense from talking with her is that there was a specific curatorial process, a long term process, and it was very jarring for that to be changed, whatever the reasons that she felt like the integrity of that process wasn't honored.

That once one of the four co-curators of “Transfeminisms,” Jennifer McCabe, left her position as director and co-curator, or excuse me, chief curator at SMoCA, that that curatorial team, the original transfeminism team lost their voice in putting the exhibition together, and her words for describing that are that it was violently edited, so they have concerns about both the content of the SMoCA show, but also I think more so the curatorial process.

BRODIE: How common or uncommon is it for this kind of thing to happen, that as an exhibition travels from one museum to another, that things about it change?

TRIMBLE: Well, I think curators I've spoken to will tell you it's not that uncommon, but in this case, the intent was to basically pack up the show in London and bring it over here and in fact they received funding from three major funders to do just that.

So, on the one hand, in general, it's not unusual, but that wasn't the intent of the original curatorial team that put this together.

BRODIE: Well, the timing of this is very interesting because it's happening at around the same time the Scottsdale City Council has done away with funding quote unquote DEI programs.

I wonder if any of the people with whom you spoke cited that as a potential reason for why this exhibition, any aspect of it that's changed, maybe has changed.

TRIMBLE: We didn't talk to anyone who expressed a direct connection between Scottsdale city actions and the changes to the exhibition, and in fact, the head of Scottsdale Arts has indicated in our reporting stated that that was not related and that would be my expectation given that this exhibit was put together long before the City Council made that decision.

I think where the DEI decision on Scottsdale's part maybe intersects most with what happened with this exhibition is it just feels like a missed opportunity. That you've got this City Council decision, mixing some DEI programs and funding, and then you had a museum that was planning to have a forum space where dialogues about just that issue, right?

DEI would have been very relevant, and this is an opportunity where a museum could have been part of raising that dialogue of creating a space, a safe space for that dialogue, but instead that element was pulled back.