The Dinner Party
| The Dinner Party | |
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| Artist | Judy Chicago |
| Year | 1979 |
| Type | Mixed media |
| Location | Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York |
| Owner | Brooklyn Museum |
The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by feminist artist Judy Chicago. Widely regarded as the first epic feminist artwork, it functions as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization. There are 39 elaborate place settings arranged along a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe are among the guests.
Each unique place-setting includes a hand-painted china plate, ceramic flatware and chalice, and a napkin with an embroidered gold edge. Each plate, except the one corresponding to Sojourner Truth, depicts a brightly-colored, elaborately styled vulva form. The settings rest upon elaborately embroidered runners, executed in a variety of needlework styles and techniques. The dinner table stands on The Heritage Floor, made up of more than 2,000 white luster-glazed triangular-shaped tiles, each inscribed in gold scripts with the name of one of 999 women who have made a mark on history.
It was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and was first exhibited in 1979. Subsequently, despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues in six countries on three continents to a viewing audience of 15 million. It was retired to storage until 1996, as it was beginning to suffer from constant traveling. Since 2007 it has been on permanent exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
The Dinner Party was created by artist Judy Chicago, with the assistance of numerous volunteers, with the goal to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."
The table is triangular and measures forty-eight feet (14.63 m) on each side. There are 13 place settings on each of the three sides of the table making 39 settings in all. Wing I honors women from Prehistory to the Roman Empire, Wing II honors women from the beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation and Wing III from the American Revolution to feminism.
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