Birth Project: Born Again
June 17, 2018–October 7, 2018
This exhibition reassembles approximately sixteen of the most exceptional Birth Project works, examining both past and present attitudes towards female empowerment and sexuality and underscoring Chicago’s redefinition of the terms art and craft. By presenting the works thirty-plus years after their creation, the exhibition emphasizes the role art can play in giving voice to the ongoing process of social change, particularly in regards to both reproductive choice and health care.
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Wednesday, May 23 | 7:30 PM -
Program A
Black Box Theatre, NYU Tisch
715 Broadway, 2nd Floor. NY 10003
Sunday, May 27 | 2:00 PM - Program B
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway,
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Short operas inspired by Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party.
A collaboration between NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, American Opera Projects, and the Brooklyn Museum
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), a global leader in art and design education, will welcome celebrated artist Judy Chicago to deliver the School’s commencement address on Monday, May 14, at Wintrust Arena, 200 East Cermak Road.
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In a landmark year for feminism, interest from a younger generation as a result of societal changes in women’s rights have sparked a renewed interest in Judy Chicago as a pioneer of the feminist movement. Chicago is responsible for one of the most important artworks of the twentieth century, The Dinner Party (1974-79), an installation celebrating women’s achievements in Western culture in the form of a meticulously executed banquet table set for 39 mythical and historical women and honoring 999 others. The work is permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum as the centerpiece of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. On her inclusion in the TIME 100 list, Chicago says, “It is ironic that after all these years, where I was once critiqued I am now being lauded. My goal has been to make a contribution to a more equitable world through art and I am honored and thrilled that my work is being recognized now by TIME. I am grateful to all those who have supported me on this long and challenging journey.”
Judy Chicago has teamed up with Prospect NY to design a fabulous line of housewares inspired by her monumental work, The Dinner Party. In addition to recreations of four iconic plates, Prospect NY has created two pillow cases based on the Entryway Banners and a silk scarf depicting the Margaret Sanger runner. Coming soon will be a puzzle of the Heritage Floor, the ceramic tiled base for The Dinner Party inscribed with the names of 999 influential women. These new products for the home enable greater access to Judy Chicago's work and furthers her goal to educate a broad and diverse audience about women's history.
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"Then there’s our cover star, Judy Chicago, a medium- and genre-defying artist who, at 78, is and will be the subject of a number of major solo gallery and museum shows over the next 18 months. The past year saw her most celebrated work, the monumental (in all senses) “The Dinner Party” (1979) — a vulvic-inspired table with ceramic plates for 39 women from across the centuries, from Sappho to Virginia Woolf — become a pop-cultural touchstone, a visual shorthand for women’s exclusion from the annals of history and a revisionist fantasy: Here, literally, was their place at the table. " -HANYA YANAGIHARA
Due March 1, 2018
Through the Flower invites artists, scholars and educators to apply for the annual award named in honor of Judy Chicago, one of the Feminist Art Movement’s key founders.The Judy Chicago Art Education Award, supported by author Faye Kellerman, includes a printed certificate and $1,000, to be given to the project selected by jurors representing the three institutions that house content comprising the Judy Chicago Portal.
Click the link below for submission details!
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A collaboration between the American feminist artist and New York fashion designer, this Judy Chicago x Lisa Perry vinyl placement showcases a blue, white, and gold ornate print. This colorful table accessory references the Isabella d'Este plate in Chicago’s The Dinner Party, an exhibition commemorating the famed scholar and politician as well as other powerful women in history.
7pm, Thursday, January 18, 2018
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York 11238-6052
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor
Judy Chicago sits down with sociologist and writer Sarah Thornton to discuss the process and challenges of creating Chicago’s iconic and ambitious work The Dinner Party, highlighted in our exhibition Roots of "The Dinner Party": History in the Making.
*Photo courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
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11am PST, Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Brooklyn Museum
Facebook Live
You think you know The Dinner Party (1974–1979)? Explore the roots of Judy Chicago's most influential and widely known work with the iconic artist herself, along with #dinnerpartyroots curator Carmen Hermo. The mini-tour will be followed by a Q&A.
January 10, 2018–March 03, 2018
SALON 94 BOWERY
243 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
From 1982 through 1987, the celebrated and iconic feminist artist, Judy Chicago, created a body of work examining the gender construct of masculinity. In a series of drawings, paintings, cast paper and bronze pieces, she explored how prevailing definitions of power have affected the world in general — and men in particular. More than thirty years after Chicago completed PowerPlay, Salon 94 is proud to present a select group of works from this prescient series in Chicago’s inaugural exhibition with the gallery.
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For ten years now, Judy Chicago’s 20th-century masterpiece The Dinner Party has been on permanent view at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum. It’s become such a fixture there that it is hard to imagine the shock and vitriol the piece caused when it was first displayed in 1979, after four years and hundreds of hands went into its production. The Dinner Party went against so many mores, even by progressive art-world standards: it was overtly political, its content directly championing women’s rights and liberation; it was constructed not by an auteur but by a community; it was comprised of ceramics and needlepoint, “decorative arts” associated with feminine domesticity. Chicago’s sculpture was—and is—radical, correcting the boldfaced names of history while inspiring a new way of conceiving open, activist art production. Amid the straightforward concept of 39 increasingly vaginal place settings, each reserved for a different groundbreaking woman, Chicago and her team filled the triangular structure with so many symbols and allusions that the reading of the work never stops. (Each side of the triangle, for instance, holds 13 place settings, which is the same number of seats at both The Last Supper and of witches in a coven.)
We have created new and irresistible products this year, including these four items — just in time to buy as holiday gifts for yourself or for a special person.
“A Goddess for You”
Specially designed, hand cast soap with a sage scent presented in a bright pink box.
“Dinner Party” Coasters
A set of 4 coasters based on plates for some of the women represented at The Dinner Party table.
“Caroline Herschel” Tea Towel
A linen towel Based on a section of the runner design for this early woman astronomer.
“Through the Flower” Silk Scarf
This sumptuous scarf is based on Judy Chicago’s landmark painting expressing the longing to move through the construct of femininity into an expanded space.
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Smart Museum of Art
University of Chicago
November 4, 2017
6:00 pm
Judy Chicago and fellow artist, Jayna Zweiman, originator of the "pussy hat" will explore how political activism is manifested in various forms, particularly in community-based projects that confront contemporary social and political issues.
The talk is moderated by Alison Gass, Dana Feitler Director of the Smart Museum
Advanced registration is required
Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, NY
October 19, 2017
5-6pm
Join us as we celebrate art and feminism at this special gala featuring the 2017 Sackler Center First Awards, honoring Judy Chicago.
Also honoring: Deborah Berke, Shirley Chisholm (posthumous), Jodi Archambault Gillette, Judith Jamison, Carol Jenkins, Roberta Kaplan, Kathy Kusner, Rita Moreno, Our Bodies Ourselves, Ruth Simmons, Edie Windsor
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Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn, NY
October 20, 2017 - March 4, 2018
The Brooklyn Museum will host an extensive exhibition of rarely seen archival, process, and documentary material created during the making of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to view Chicago's seminal work, permanently housed at the Elizabeth A Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, alongside the historical documents, test materials, and ephemera which tell the story of this monumental artwork.
National Museum
of Women in the Arts
Washington, D.C.
September 17, 2017 - January 5, 2018
NMWA presents, Inside the Dinner Party Studio, and exhibition exploring the studio environment during the creation of Judy Chicago's monumental work, The Dinner Party through archives, documentation, and film.
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Jessica Silverman Gallery
San Francisco, CA
September 8 - October 28, 2017
On view at the Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco, September 8 - October 28.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Judy Chicago will be in conversation with writer, Sarah Thornton, in an event titled, "Pussy Power," held at the JCC in San Francisco on September 10th at 7 pm.
Judy Chicago's Pussiespresents works ranging from 1964 to 2004. Judy Chicago's work has long been associated with images of pussy power as a visual metaphor for female agency, even before the term was widely accepted. What is less well known are her images of cats. This exhibition is the first to trace the long a fascinating overlap between her broad ranging, beautiful "central core" imagery and her eccentric feline iconography.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC is proud to announce the creation of the Judy Chicago Visual Archive at the museum’s Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center. The archive will document Chicago’s career through photographs, slides, negatives and printed ephemera. These materials span the 1960s through the present and capture fleeting performance pieces such as her pyrotechnics and dry ice works, as well as exhibitions of drawings, paintings, sculpture and installations, including The Dinner Party. The visual archive will be an essential resource for researchers.
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Judy Chicago was invited by Tate Liverpool to be one of 13 artists, musicians, and performers from the UK and abroad, each tasked with representing one of the tracks on the Beatles' seminal album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, as part of a city-wide celebration of the album's 50th anniversary. For her assigned song, "Fixing A Hole," Judy designed a 40 foot high mural that was painted on the side of the monumental White Tomkins and Courage Grain Silo at Stanley Dock in Liverpool.
On April 26th, Judy Chicago and a team of event assistants from across the US, built the artist's fourth dry ice installation, this time at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as part of the museum's celebration of their new building. The piece, titled "Be No More", was constructed during an all-day build with more than 20 tons (40,000 pounds) of dry ice and illuminated with hundreds of road flares. Throughout the day and into the evening, thousands of onlookers were attracted to the installation which spelled out the word "truth" as a metaphor for a new and disturbing reality in the U.S., the idea of alternative facts. In the evening, the word was lit from within with pink flares, which turned the entire environment a pearly pink. After dark, there was a second lighting which caused the brightly lit word to be reflected in the adjacent glass wall of the museum. Then, the lights faded and slowly, the ice sublimated (or disappeared). But for a short time—as she has done throughout her career—Judy Chicago attempted to speak truth to power.
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Chad Alligood, curator at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, gave a lively presentation on Judy Chicago's minimalist works. A Q & A followed with Chad and Judy. Over 300 people viewed the talk sponsored by WISC (Women's International Study Center) held at the Form and Concept Gallery in Santa Fe. Chad was in residence at WISC to draft an essay for an upcoming monograph on Judy Chicago to be published by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This volume will offer new scholarship on a variety of specialized topics throughout the artist’s career.
Judy Chicago's works are featured in Jessica Silverman Gallery's booth at the Art Los Angeles Contemporary art fair. January 27, 28, and 29, Booth C3. The Barker Hangar, Santa Monica, CA
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January 12 - 15, 2017: Judy Chicago's work was featured in the Jessica Silverman Gallery's booth at FOG Design + Art Fair in San Francisco. The works on display are vintage pieces from the 1970's and 1980's including domes and "Creation" scrolls which were made at Magnolia Press in the Bay area.
Judy Chicago's work was featured in Salon 94's booth at Frieze Masters at Regent’s Park, London, UK, October 6 – 9, 2016.
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Judy Chicago's 1983 work Earth Birth from the Birth Project was showcased in Salon 94's Frieze New York booth. The New York gallery, founded by Jeanne Greenberg-Rohatyn, represents Judy Chicago. The work received accolades in both the New York Times and ARTnews art reviews. In ARTnews, Andrew Russeth writes, "Probably the biggest surprise of the fair for me, literally and figuratively: Judy Chicago's Earth Birth, 1983. This beauty is 6 feet tall and 11 feet long, and it explodes off the wall while also sucking you in. It was at the booth of Salon 94, which is now showing Chicago." Image courtesy of Salon 94, New York
Paige Pogrebin 05.05.16 Judy Chicago is now represented by the New York gallery, Salon 94, founded by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. Also announced in the New York Times: "Jill Soloway, creator of the acclaimed Amazon television series 'Transparent,' is ... making an Amazon series based on Womanhouse, the 1972 feminist art space that Ms. Chicago organized with Miriam Schapiro."
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Frieze week in London: Judy Chicago was interviewed by curator, critic, and art historian, Hans Ulrich Obrist, for the Transformation Marathon.
Curated by renowned feminist curator Xabier Arakistain and drawing from works across Chicago’s career, this exhibition both celebrates Chicago's oeuvre and challenges the ongoing institutional resistance to her work. The exhibition opened at Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao, Spain, and is currently on view at the CAPC musée d'art contemporain in Bordeaux, France, through September 4th, 2016!
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This groundbreaking reassessment of Pop Art surveyed global engagements with Pop, its origins and its socio-political underpinnings. The exhibition brought together three of Chicago’s seminal Car Hoods.
Judy Chicago's work was included in two exhibitions in conjunction with Expo Milano 2015 -- Arts & Foods, curated by Germano Celant, and The Great Mother, curated by Massimiliano Gioni.
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In her latest book, Chicago discusses her own art pedagogy and proposes ways that studio art education can be improved for the current generation of artists. Tackling such topics as sexism and bias that many young artists face, this radical and constructive critique is a must-read for a new perspective on studio art education.
"I want to translate particular experiences into universal observations" -- Judy Chicago
Chicago's series Heads Up includes watercolors, sketches, two-dimensional painted glass and three-dimensional cast glass and ceramic heads. Chicago worked on the series from 2007 - 2013, and the work debuted at David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2014.
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To celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday, Judy Chicago drew inspiration from her earliest explorations of feminist imagery to create a monumental pyrotechnic performance piece, A Butterfly for Brooklyn, in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park on April 26th, 2014. The site-specific work measuring approximately 200 feet wide by 180 feet high levitated and swirled before 12,000 viewers. Presented by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in partnership with Prospect Park Alliance, with major funding from Barbara and Eric Dobkin, the project was an outdoor component of the exhibition Chicago in L. A.: Judy Chicago’s Early Work, 1962-1974 at the Sackler Center at the Brooklyn Museum.
A series of exhibitions and events are held around the country at various institutions and galleries including the Palmer Museum at Penn State University, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art, David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, and Redline in Denver.
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Mana Contemporary and Nyehaus presented this major survey of key works from Chicago’s career and one of the select nationwide exhibitions and events celebrating the artist’s 75th birthday.
Chicago's early work was showcased by Riflemaker Gallery and Nyehaus for Frieze Masters London.
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This solo exhibition at Nye + Brown in Culver City. California, showcased Judy Chicago's early abstract works from the '60s, as well a comprehensive survey of works made while Judy Chicago was living in Los Angeles between 1961-1973. Tim Nye and Lexi Brown commissioned Judy Chicago to create an entirely new fireworks piece for the opening, titled The Deflowering of Nye + Brown. Working with Pyro Spectaculars, Chicago framed the gallery entrance with a series of petal forms that ignited and burst into rhythmic explosions.
In early 2011, the Museum of Art and Design in New York presented the first survey of Judy Chicago’s work in tapestry which dates back to the mid 1970’s. This body of art - woven by Chicago’s long-time collaborator, Audrey Cowan - was gifted to the museum by Audrey and her husband Bob.
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Judy Chicago was actively involved in Pacific Standard Time, a Getty funded initiative involving almost every institution from Santa Barbara to San Diego, documenting and celebrating Southern California art from 1945-1980, more than 20 of which years, Chicago was working in Los Angeles. Chicago’s work was exhibited in eight museum shows (including the Getty, LAMOCA, Otis Art Institute, the Pomona College Art Museum and the Pasadena Museum of California Art). Chicago kicked off the Getty PST Performance Festival with the restaging of two events, Sublime Environment (a dry ice installation) and A Butterfly for Brooklyn, the first fireworks piece Chicago created since 1974.
Penn State University acquired Judy Chicago's art education archive, now housed in the University Archives in the Special Collections Library on campus, as well as online. The Judy Chicago Art Education Collection is a living archive on feminist art education.
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Written by Judy Chicago with art historian Frances Borzello, Face to Face: Frida Kahlo has handpicked a selection of Kahlo's work, a hundred portraits that speak to the full spectrum of women's experience. The result is a fascinating conversation between two artistic icons.
Through the Flower made available The Dinner Party curriculum aimed at K-12 school teachers, created by Chicago in collaboration with Dr. Constance Gee, a well-known art educator, who brought together a select group of curriculum writers. A summer workshop program to train art teachers in The Dinner Party curriculum is offered at Kutztown University.
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The Dinner Party opened in its new permanent housing at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in a specially designed exhibition space, created along with an educational database, ancillary exhibitions and programs. Also, in conjunction with the opening of the Sackler Center and The Dinner Party, Global Feminisms opened at the museum, an exhibition curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, the renowned art historian. This exhibit demonstrated the global impact of the Feminist Art Movement that Chicago helped initiate in the early seventies when she went to Fresno to create a Feminist Art Practice.
WACK: Art and the Feminist Revolution, curated by Connie Butler, opened at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. This was the first major survey of Feminist art, chronicling the revolutionary art movement that ushered in a historic change, i.e. the first time women were able to openly work out of their experiences as women.
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Dr. Gail Levin’s biography, Becoming Judy Chicago was published in conjunction with the exhibition, Judy Chicago: Jewish Identity, curated by Gail Levin and Laura Kruger, curator of Hebrew Union Gallery in New York. The exhibition explored the ways in which Chicago’s Jewish background impacted her life and work.
Chicago in Glass opened at LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, a survey of Chicago’s two and three dimensional work in stained glass, fused, cast, etched and painted glass. Chicago explored this new media and transformed a challenging technique into a vehicle for personal expression. She continues to work in glass, particularly cast and kiln fired glass painting.
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Chicago premiered KittyCity: A Feline Book of Hours, a series of watercolors that were also collected in a lavishly illustrated book based upon a traditional Book of Hours but in this instance, chronicling a day in the life of the Chicago/Woodman’s household, which was home to six cats. In conjunction with the publication of the book and exhibitions around the country, Chicago worked with animal rescue agencies around the country to do cat adoptions.
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation acquired and gifted The Dinner Party (1974-79) to the Brooklyn Museum with the intention of permanently housing it in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first such institution in the world. At this same time the Brooklyn Museum exhibited The Dinner Party for a second time (a prior exhibition was held in 1980) but this time, the critical climate had dramatically changed. Instead of the hostile and vitriolic reception originally accorded The Dinner Party by the mainstream critics, it was hailed by Roberta Smith in the New York Times who described the piece as “...almost as much a part of American culture as Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, the WPA murals and the AIDS quilts.” and “...as getting better all the time."
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Chicago returned to teaching, doing semester long project classes, that culminated in exhibitions, at institutions around the country, including: Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; Duke University, Durham, NC; Western Kentucky University Bowling Green, KY; Cal-Poly, Pomona, CA; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Several films were made about her unique teaching methods which had their roots in the Feminist art programs of the 1970’s. In 2001, she began team-teaching with Donald Woodman, which allowed her to extend her feminist-based pedagogy to include men.
Chicago and Woodman moved into the Belen Hotel in Belen, New Mexico, a historic railroad hotel on the National Register of Historic Places, after a three-year renovation/restoration by Woodman. This is the first home of their own either of them has ever had.
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Judy Chicago published the second volume of her autobiography, which unabashedly probes the issues of gender, power and history that also characterize her monumental works, and asks hard questions about art in our culture.
Chicago's archives are housed at the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, which documents the lives of women of the past and present for the future. Chicago recalled the first time she visited the library, "I was so overwhelmed I burst into tears because we have so few institutions of our own.”
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From 1994 to 2000, Chicago created a series of painted and needleworked images re-interpreting traditional proverbs for a multi-cultural future with a select group of needleworkers in the project Resolutions: A Stitch in Time. Described by renowned British art writer Edward Lucie-Smith in his 1999 monograph, Judy Chicago: An American Vision, as a “post-modern project that subverts the traditions of both needlework and proverbs.” The exhibition was curated by David Revere McFadden, senior curator at the Museum of Art and Design in NY, where it premiered in 2000, subsequently traveling to museums in the U.S. and Canada.
Through the Flower moved from Benicia, California, to New Mexico, starting a series of public programs and art workshops. It is headquartered in Belen, New Mexico. Currently, Through the Flower has refocused its activities so that it can fulfill its mission to educate a broad public about the importance of art and its power in countering the erasure of women’s achievements through providing resource and research materials through our institutional partners.
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From 1985 -1993, Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman worked on the Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light, a journey into the darkness of the Holocaust which resulted in an exhibition that combined painting and photography to explore the meaning of the Holocaust in a contemporary context. It is introduced by a monumental tapestry suggesting that the Holocaust grew out of the ‘fabric’ of Western Civilization and concludes with a large stained glass installation, Rainbow Shabbat: A Vision for the Future.
After a whirlwind romance, Judy Chicago and photographer Donald Woodman married. Their wedding was officiated by a female rabbi, and they explored Jewish tradition together and learned about their Jewish heritage. Judy Chicago's Merger Poem was sung at the ceremony.
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From 1982-1987, Judy Chicago worked on the series PowerPlay, an examination of the construct of masculinity in drawings, paintings, sculptures, weavings, cast paper and bronze.
Chicago settled in Benicia, California, to start the Birth Project (1980-85), a series of painted and needle-worked images celebrating creation and the glory and pain of the birth experience, the joy and challenges of pregnancy and the sense of entrapment that often accompanies the satisfaction of giving life. Mary Ross coordinated the collaborative effort over the five years it took to create. Through the Flower moved into an 11,000-square-foot building in Benicia’s industrial park. Unlike The Dinner Party (1974-79), where needleworkers gathered at Chicago's studio, Birth Project volunteers worked at home, periodically visiting Benicia for reviews. Chicago also traveled around the country, visiting the volunteers to review their work at their homes.
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The Dinner Party (1974-79) opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with the support of Museum Director Henry Hopkins. Feminist programs and activities accompanied the opening, marking the first time a mainstream museum opened its doors to feminist culture. Opening night drew 5,000 people; more than 100,000 people viewed the work during its three-month run. For the most part, the art press was outraged by the butterfly/vagina imagery but that was lost in the avalanche of popular media. In 1980, The Dinner Party re-opened at the Clearlake campus of the University of Houston, thanks to the efforts of Mary Ross Taylor who became the administrator of Chicago's nonprofit, Through the Flower. Under the guidance of exhibit administrator Diane Gelon, The Dinner Party began an unprecedented, grassroots-fueled worldwide tour to six countries, three continents and was seen by more than one million people.
In 1978, Chicago established Through the Flower, a 501(c) non-profit corporation to manage the avalanche of small donations supporting The Dinner Party’s completion. Its original mission of providing a fiscal structure for donations to help complete The Dinner Party quickly evolved, and soon Through the Flower began to organize the worldwide exhibition tour that brought The Dinner Party to sixteen venues in six countries and three continents to over one million viewers. Through the Flower has supported numerous projects since its inception. Through the Flower's mission is to educate a broad public about the importance of art and its power in countering the erasure of women’s achievements.
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Doubleday published Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist in March. It subsequently was published in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan and Taiwan.
Chicago firmed up her vision of The Dinner Party (1974-79), a symbolic history of women in Western civilization, as a triangular shaped table with 39 place settings, 13 plates to a side, and spanning time from the mythical Primordial Goddess to women in Twentieth Century.
Chicago stopped teaching to work on The Dinner Party (1974-79). She conceived of the work as a reinterpretation of The Last Supper from “the point of view of those who’ve done the cooking throughout history." Her butterfly motif images would rise off the plates, symbolizing women’s struggle for freedom.
Hundreds of volunteers joined The Dinner Party production crew. All total, 400 men and women worked on the installation, from needleworkers to industrial designers, as well as 20 researchers who helped compile the 999 names on the Heritage Floor.
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Chicago created A Butterfly for Oakland out of 200 road flares outlining a butterfly, to be lit at sunset. A Butterfly for Oakland shimmered for 17 minutes on the shore of Lake Merritt as part of a "Sculpture in the City" project by the Oakland Museum.
Chicago collaborated with art historian Arlene Raven and designer Sheila de Bretteville to open the Feminist Studio Workshop and Woman’s Building, a public center for women's culture, in Los Angeles in 1973. Five-thousand people came to the opening. Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Arlene Raven are pictured.
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America’s sexual revolution was in full swing and Chicago poured her energy into her art, delving deeper into expressing the range of female experiences that are emblematic of her work. In 1973, Chicago spray painted such landmark works as Through the Flower, Heaven is for White Men Only and Let It All Hang Out. In addition, Chicago began writing Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist.”
Intrigued by a hand-painted porcelain plate she saw at an antique store, Chicago began studying china painting. Not one for painting rose buds, Chicago eventually found a mentor, Rosemarie Radmaker, who appreciated her desire to apply this fusion of color to a glazed porcelain surface for her own images.
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Chicago moved the Feminist Art Program to the California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts) and began team teaching with Miriam Schapiro. The 21 women in the program renovated a dilapidated old house at 553 Mariposa Avenue in Hollywood. They worked non-stop for three months, repairing the house as well as creating their revolutionary installations. Womanhouse is the first openly female-centered art installation in contemporary art, and attracted wide media publicity as well as more than 10,000 people during its one-month run.
In the spring, Chicago joined the faculty at Fresno State College to teach a women’s-only art program. She encouraged her students to communicate their experiences as women through their art, a ground-breaking and radical idea at the time. With hammers, saws and power tools in hand, the women renovated an old community theater into a 5,000-square-foot studio of their own. In 1971, Chicago wrote in her personal journal about her content-based approach to teaching art: “I want to begin to establish regular contact with the growth of the first Feminist Art ever attempted.” In her entry, she renamed her course the “Feminist Art Program.”
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In December, Artforum ran a full-page ad of Chicago posing like a pugilist in a boxing ring. The Fullerton show debuted Chicago's large, donut-shaped Pasadena Lifesavers, a series of 15 sprayed acrylic lacquer paintings on Plexiglas. Photograph by Jerry McMillan.
Gerowitz (Chicago) legally changed her name, which she announced in an ad for her solo show at Cal State Fullerton in the October Artforum magazine: “Judy Gerowitz hereby divests herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance and freely chooses her own name: Judy Chicago.”
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Through 1968 through 1974, Judy Gerowitz (Chicago) expanded her experimentation with altering environments with her work in flares and fireworks. Gerowitz (Chicago) enlisted her friends to travel all over Southern California and release colored smokes into the air in an attempt to “feminize” the atmosphere. She called these works Atmospheres.
Judy Gerowitz (Chicago) attended boat-building school in Long Beach, learning how to work in fiberglass. There, she created 10 Part Cylinder for the Sculpture of the Sixties exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gerowitz (Chicago) was one of only five women artists included in the exhibition.
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The year began with Judy Gerowitz's (Chicago's) first solo show at Rolf Nelson Gallery. In April, Rainbow Pickett – named after soul singer Wilson Pickett – was featured in the Primary Structures show at New York’s Jewish Museum. Gerowitz (Chicago) was one of only a few women showing at this major minimalist exhibition, and Rainbow Pickett made Time Magazine’s review.
Judy Gerowitz (Chicago) earned her master's degree in painting and sculpture from UCLA and was exhibiting in the nascent and extremely macho L.A. art scene. To learn how to spray paint, she enrolled in an auto body school, the only woman in the class of 250.
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Judy Gerowitz (Chicago) was widowed one month before she turned 24, when Jerry Gerowitz died in an automobile accident. They had married in the spring of 1961. She moved to Santa Monica and turned to her work -- large paintings on Masonite.
Judy Cohen (Chicago) enrolled at UCLA where she majored in art and minored in humanities. The professor of Cohen's (Chicago's) Intellectual History of Europe class stated that women have made no contributions to history, igniting Cohen (Chicago) to search to prove him wrong, and eventually resulting in The Dinner Party).
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Judy Cohen's (Chicago's) father, Arthur Cohen, died from complications during surgery for an infected ulcer five days before her 14th birthday. Devastated, Cohen (Chicago) took refuge in her art.
At age eight, Judy Cohen (Chicago) began attending the Chicago Art Institute Junior School. She studied under the legendary, and beloved, teacher Emmanuel Jacobson, whose classical technique stresses still-life drawing and anatomy of animals as well as humans. She attended his weekly art classes for the next 10 years.
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Judy Cohen's (Chicago's) art received recognition from her pre-school teacher, who told Mrs. Cohen that her four-year-old daughter has talent. In 1945, Mrs. Cohen enrolled Chicago in Saturday classes at the Chicago Art Institute.
Judith Sylvia Cohen, was born on July 20, 1939 to May and Arthur Cohen in Chicago, Illinois. She started drawing at age three. Cohen's (Chicago's) mother, a former dancer, encouraged her art. And her father, a political activist and labor organizer, valued equality and justice, which he instilled in his daughter.
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