The city of Mesa is facing a lawsuit from the former chief curator of its Contemporary Arts Museum over a controversy that started over a year ago when the city was accused of censorship for postponing an exhibition featuring famed artist Shepard Fairey.
Tiffany Fairall is accusing the city of violating her First Amendment Rights for trying to get her to remove a controversial print from a 2023 exhibition featuring Fairey’s work that city officials allegedly thought would offend police.
Fairall refused, but the city terminated her employment the next year, she says in retaliation. But Lynn Trimble, a writer for Southwest Contemporary, says that was just one example of censorship by the city outlined in this suit.
Trimble has been covering the story for Southwest Contemporary and joined The Show to tell us more.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Let’s start with what’s in this lawsuit. Tiffany Fairall is accusing the city of Mesa of First Amendment violations, essentially. What’s her argument?
LYNN TRIMBLE: It’s a 25-page document, and it's very complex. It’s got quite a few layers. Essentially there are six counts, six different counts. They have different defendants, different former and current employees of the city of Mesa, as well as the city of Mesa, which is the main defendant.
And she’s actually looking at four different violations of law or statute. You mentioned the one for First Amendment rights. Also the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. And the reason you see such sort of a broad swath of legal reasoning there is that she’s talking not only about the censorship of Shepard Fairey’s show and other shows, but she’s also talking about — via the lawsuit, of course, she hasn’t publicly commented — but via the lawsuit, she’s expressing sort of what happened in the aftermath.
Because it’s been more than a year, and she’s talking about things that have happened since. And, you know, and and it gets into a lot of complex issues, around issues around, you know, how people may be treated differently based on gender or racism, allegations. It’s quite a hefty brew of concerns that she’s got.
GILGER: And we’ll get into some of that in a moment. Remind us, Lynn, what happened here with this Shepard Fairey show. This ultimately happened, but there were some changes to the show. It was postponed last year when this all went down. What was the controversy?
TRIMBLE: The initial controversy surrounded the city manager asking Fairall as chief curator to remove a work of art from the show. He asked them to remove a work called “My Florist Is a Dick.” He objected to it based on the language as well as the fact that the graphic for the this artwork involves a police officer in riot gear, with a skeletal face.
And he felt it was an unflattering depiction of law enforcement and expressed concern that city employees, that Mesa police officers might take offense and has expressed in other meetings we’ve intended and so forth that that didn’t align with city values, respect for employees and so forth.
So it started with that. And Tiffany declined to remove the work. And of course then there was a domino effect.
GILGER: Right. So talk a little bit about that. There were two artists who were not in the show when it finally did appear at the Mesa Art center there. And it was postponed.
TRIMBLE: Correct. The city's approach — as alleged in documents and also as I reported from attending meetings where defendants have spoken — the city decided to put a pause on the exhibition so that they could ascertain, “What should we do?”
They thought about putting an alternative exhibition in the space. Actually, it would have been a showcase of Mesa’s recent receipt of an All-American City award. They had planned an opening, I believe it was in September. And when the controversy ensued, the city basically decided we want more time to work this out.
And over the course of that month, during conversations the result was that the Shepard Fairey show moved forward. It included the work that had been in dispute with signage helping to set context that the city felt was important for context for that piece of art.
And then there were two exhibitions that happened as well. And there were two artists, locally based, Arizona-based Thomas “Breeze” Marcus and Douglas Miles, who were slotted to have solo exhibitions. And in conversations with the city, which they have discussed publicly, had basically decided that between the city and the artists, there were not agreements about what would be shown. And so the exhibitions were not shown.
And I have to tell you, it’s one of the really most jarring things I’ve seen in an art exhibit here or anywhere is to walk into gallery spaces where you’re used to seeing — particularly local artists, their work shown — and those spaces were left empty.
GILGER: Wow. So you mentioned the signage the city put in. They put up signs sort of saying, “This does not represent necessarily the views of the city.” You also reported that the city in the lawsuit, at least it said that the city changed its artist contracts and curation procedures following this. And Fairall took issue with that, it sounds like.
TRIMBLE: Yes. The city has talked about — again, in public meetings and so forth — has talked about changing the controls on what gets shown so that the city will have more city officials — specifically, the city manager’s office would have more notice of what artwork was being shown — that they would be told sooner about artwork so that if there was something objectionable or they wanted to get community feedback, they would have time to do so.
And since the original controversy, they have not publicly released a new set of guidelines. So we don’t know the extent to which they have formalized new practices and policies, but we know they’ve been under discussion. But what we do know is that their intention is to have greater control. And of course, that’s one of the big controversies here, as stated in the lawsuit is how much control can a city or government have over what’s shown in art space?
Here the city runs the art space. So, you know, it’s different from a public gallery.
GILGER: Yeah, it’s very interesting. What has the city of Mesa said about this lawsuit so far, Lynn?
TRIMBLE: The city of Mesa has told Southwest Contemporary that they’re not commenting because it’s pending litigation. So that’s the only comment that we’ve been able to receive so far.
