21c Museum Opening Highlights + Artwork at Aspen Art Fair & S15 Art Prize

My favorite moments from the opening and selected works in the show by Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith, Carrie Mae Weems and more...

There is so much heartbreak happening with the world right now, it was a balm to be part of an exhibition that presents an alternative perspective and possibilities for our future. I was honored to give the opening night presentation at The Future is Female exhibition at the 21c Museum in St. Louis where my sculpture Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring was installed along with artworks from many of my favorite feminist artists.

The beautifully curated exhibition by chief curator Alice Gray Stites with 94 feminist artworks created a vision for our world that felt like a powerful space to inhabit and for others to visit. This show will be up for a year.

I felt a great responsibility giving the opening night presentation. These talks are an opportunity to give historical context in a world that feels like it’s without context. It also gives me the opportunity to look at my circuitous path and all the threads that led to creating this new work. Stites titled the show The Future is Female based on a feminist phrase from the 1970s. In her opening remarks, she shared that it’s a question rather than a statement: Can the future be more feminist? The first line of my feminist history tree ring is “50,000 years ago: Goddesses are worshipped.” In nearly every ancient civilization that was the case, before male gods and patriarchy, which I learned when my father was writing his book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess. So my “a-ha” moment when preparing for the talk was that in many ways, the feminist history tree ring is about how The Past Is Female too.

I also did a very scary thing to open my presentation by sharing an extremely embarrassing story that happened to me at a 21c Museum hotel over 20 years ago. As I tell Ken’s and my daughters, do things each year that scare the !@#$% out of you. I will share this video at some point.

Four female chefs from 21c prepared an exquisite dinner inspired by the artwork.

It was a life highlight for sure. Below, there are some of my favorite pieces in the show. For those of you in or near St. Louis, it will be up for one year and I will be back on Oct 8 for an event focused on protecting women’s rights as we get close to the midterms with Dr. Nancy O’Reilly and Women Connect4Good. Please let me know if you want to come.

Those of you in Aspen, Nancy Hoffman from my gallery in New York (who I love talking to about all things art and life) is showing my artwork below, Becoming, at Aspen Art Fair Booth B16 at The Hotel Jerome today until Aug 2nd. Becoming is about how we continue to evolve into new versions of who we are, each time getting closer to the core. The first edition I made for Expo Chicago, and I just made this new one for Aspen. Each one is slightly different and I now have a large framed print. I love playing with the scale of these. Here’s the scale of the miniature sculpture at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery Booth. Let me know if you’d like me to connect you to my gallery for details.

The New York Times wrote a great article about this new Aspen Art Fair when it started last year headed up by Nancy Hoffman’s daughter Rebecca Hoffman that you can read here.

For all the artists here, SHACK15 just initiated a fantastic new SHACK15 Art Prize: $200,000 that will be distributed to 7 fellows. I loved being artist-in-residence there in 2022. Having that space at the SF Ferry Building allowed me to create Dendrofemonology. I am forever grateful to Jørn Lyseggen and his whole team. Learn more about this new art prize here.

di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art has their opening exhibition in their new SF location in the Minnesota Street Project campus called Far Out this Saturday, Aug 2. Ken and I are very much looking forward to having our Getty PST Art & Science Collide exhibition Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology exhibition that originated in LA at the Skirball travel to di Rosa SF for its opening on Jan 20, 2026 (save the date.)

One other date to save is Oct 15 for the 20-year anniversary of Ken’s and my film The Tribe at Manny’s in SF; more on that soon.

My next official newsletter will be in September but here’s some new great new work from friends that I need to call out. I just pre-ordered books from Eric Pickersgill on his artwork Removed and Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Private I: A Memoir. Kevin Smokler will be speaking on his book on women directors Break the Frame at My Book Soup Sunset in LA Aug 5th 7pm.

I also hope you saw this heartbreaking and incredible video of poet Andrea Gibson reading her Letters from the Afterlife to their life partner. Puts everything into perspective.

And lastly, a big happy birthday to my wonderful mother Carole Lewis, PhD, on her 85th cycle around the sun. You inspire me so much, especially in this new chapter in your life, volunteering by running support groups at the senior center in SF’s The Village retirement community, and making so many new friends in your eighties. My mom is such a great example of what I was trying to convey in my Becoming artwork. May we all live such a rich life that continues to give meaning, always becoming who we are meant to be.

xo,

Tiffany

Below are some of the artworks in the 21c Museum Future is Female exhibition. Please keep in mind there are 94 artworks in this exhibition. These are just a handful of the images. Definitely make your way out to see it in person if you can.

Curator Alice Gray Stites wrote a powerful catalogue for the show you can read here.

Jenny Holzer, I Am Afraid

Zoë Buckman, Champ

JLalla Essaydi, Bullets Revisited #3

Azita Moradkhani, Iran. (See the women protesting at the base of the bust.)

Frances Goodman, Medusa. (This artwork is made from acrylic nails.)

Carrie Mae Weems, Weems and Buffalo Jump

Kiki Smith, Ballerina (Stretching Right)

Yvette Molina, Freedom Beings 4 & 6

Cheryl Pope, Portrait of a Woman

Michele Pred, Reflections

Andrea Bowers, March on Washington, March 3rd, 1913

Mickalene Thomas, Portrait of Qusuquzah

Jess T. Dugan, Self-Portrait (Reaching)

Marina Peng, waxing, waning, wanting, in the parlor of 21c Museum Hotel. The 21c Museum Hotels have multiple locations all throughout the midwest, comprising one of the largest contemporary art museums in the U.S. They are North America’s only collecting museum dedicated solely to art of the 21st century. Highly recommend checking out.

“Breakfast at Tiffany's” is a monthly newsletter I’ve been publishing for 29 years. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe below.