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The Future is Female Exhibition
A Night of Feminist Art & Action
October 8, 2025 @ 5:00 pm
This event will be held in-person at 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis.
Join us for a night of art & action!
Please join us at the 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis for an inspiring evening celebrating the exhibition The Future is Female, featuring top feminist artists from around the world.
Artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, creator of Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, returns on October 8 for a special event including, a welcome by 21c Museum Hotel’s Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, an artist talk and the premiere of Shlain’s film We Are Here, a 7 minute film about the ideas and process behind Dendrofemonology, and a panel discussion with local leaders advancing women’s rights along with a reading by Poet Laureate of St. Louis, Pacia Elaine Anderson. Learn more about the event and the panelists here.
Hosted by 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis and Women Connect4Good, this promises to be a powerful night of art, action, and inspiration.
EVENT INFO
- Reception & Light Bites: 5:00–6:00 pm
- Welcome, Talk & Panel Discussion: 6:00–7:15 pm
- 7 minute film premiere
- Closing reading by St. Louis Poet Laureate Pacia Anderson
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
THE FUTURE IS FEMALE
The Future is Female” highlights the impact of the art of the Second Wave Women’s movement on today’s cultural landscape while examining contemporary definitions of female identity and experience.
Gleaming acrylic fingernails glued into patterned, reptilian forms that emerge from the wall; female anatomy rendered in neon light and boxing gloves; haunting words about the present overlaid on imagery of the past: surface tension abounds in this exploration of contemporary feminist art. The broad range of media and subject matter presented reflects the ongoing influence of the art of the second-wave women’s liberation movement, which engendered unprecedented cultural change, shifting art-making out of the isolated studio and hallowed institutions into both more intimate domestic and broader public spheres. The ensuing transformation ushered in generations of artists addressing identity, the body, and the affirmation of personal experience. As critic Laura Cottingham writes, “[contemporary] art engaged with sexuality, conscious politics, gender roles,…first person video, autobiography, and performance is directly indebted to the space opened up for new media and new content by the feminist art movement in the seventies.
PRESENTERS
TIFFANY SHLAIN Artist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, & Webby Awards founder
BRITTANY HUGHES Community organizer for ACLU MO
HILLARY ELFENBEIN John K. Wallace, Jr. and Ellen A. Wallace Distinguished Professor & Professor of Organizational Behavior at WashU
MIRANDA RECTENWALD Curator of Local History, WashU
PACIA ELAINE ANDERSON Poet Laureate of St. Louis
PRESENTED BY
