Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party and 1970s Feminist Art

Bryleigh Pierce
Oct 17, 2024
35 min read

Updated: Jun 2

The 1970s was a tumultuous decade wherein the Vietnam War came to an end, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in straight sets as 50 million viewers watched, the Boeing 747 took its first commercial flight, Microsoft was founded, the Beatles disbanded, Star Wars premiered and Elvis Presley died. Amongst all this, art history was subverted by women who didn’t want to simply forge a place for themselves within the canon, but to entirely disinherit the narratives it told. Written with distinctly gendered terminology, these narratives have been designed to uphold patriarchal fantasies whereby the (male) genius artist suffers greatly for their art and is posthumously rewarded with generations of admirers who extol their life and emulate their work, creating a linear narrative of art that charts humanities evolution from caves to civilisation and outlines the human condition. Such veneration is not possible for a woman who is incapable of introspection and whose feminine duties will always be at the forefront of her labour, even if that labour happens to manifest in art.

‘Feminine’ has been the go-to term used by artists, scholars, critics and writers when talking about art created by a woman, regardless of its subject, medium or meaning, in order to diminish its importance in the art historical narrative and perpetuate the myths of the genius and of women artists, while historians may have relented that they did exist, are yet to create anything of note or importance. In this narrative, what little art women did make was primarily concerned with distinctly ‘feminine’ topics – motherhood, beauty, the home, etc. – and it was, therefore, not to be taken seriously. As a result, the reality of the human condition that art records and elucidates, and the framework for its depictions, is that of the male condition – explored through a distinctly male lens and identified through distinctly male experiences.

Since the development of feminist art history in the 1970s, a great deal of effort has been made to reinterpret the work of historical women artists in relation to its context and content rather than its ‘feminine concerns’ or how it fits into the male-centric narrative. Despite their efforts, art history still largely teaches that Artemisia Gentileschi did not invert common stories and subjects to instead focus on the role of women but that she was always using her art to live out fantasies of revenge on her attacker; that Mary Beale was not a pioneer of self-portraiture and author of the earliest known piece of art writing by a woman, but a student of Peter Lely’s courtly style;1 that Berthe Morisot was not a pioneer and crucial member of the Impressionists, but a painter of “delicate” embraces and “charming” domestic scenes;2 that Lee Krasner’s near-constant innovation with oil paint was not ground-breaking, but a “sensuous love of the medium”;3 and that Lee Miller’s shocking photographs taken inside WWII detention camps should be revered not for their haunting confirmation of atrocities and violence, but for their assumption of a “lyrical beauty”.4

In an attempt to circumnavigate a diminishing reading of their work, many women artists of the twentieth century began to exorcise their art of anything that could be labelled with a feminine adjective. Judy Chicago (born 1939) was one of many who set out on this course but soon realised the damage it was doing by inhibiting her artistic development and that, in order to fully develop as an artist and explore the human condition, she must explore the reality of her own condition – the female condition. This, Chicago says, first required her to study women’s art and look for clues in their work that could help her understand the feminine experience historically before she could begin understanding her own, thus beginning her quest for a new “framework of reality” that reflects the feminine condition, which she believes she constructed through her 1979 installation piece The Dinner Party (1974-79).5

Fig 1: The Dinner Party installation view

In the spring of 1970, Chicago began an appointment at Fresno State College and was given free rein in her teaching which allowed her to establish an all-female environment where she and her students could study women artists away from the male-dominated art scene. This, she said, was essential in allowing them to “see ourselves in terms of our own needs and desires, not in terms of male stereotypes of women” and was the basis of what would become the Feminist Art Program (FAP).6 In October of the following year, Chicago took a position at the California Institute of the Arts where she collaborated with renowned artist and pioneer of the feminist art movement Miriam Schapiro (1923-2015), to further develop and establish the FAP as an official program, uniquely taught exclusively for women, by women, and about women.

Approximately twenty-five women took part in the FAP’s inaugural year which culminated in Womanhouse (1972), a collaborative installation staged in a rundown mansion on Mariposa Street in Los Angeles belonging to a woman named Amanda Psalter and set for demolition.7 Beginning as a topic for class discussion on “what it would be like to work out one of our closest associative memories – the home”, Womanhouse led to “an intimate insight into the world of women artists, allowing them to express their perspectives and experiences within a predominantly male-dominated art community”. Schapiro outlined the project, stating, “Our home, which we as a culture of women have been identified with for centuries, has always been the area where we nourished and were nourished... What would happen, we asked, if we created a home in which we pleased no one but ourselves?” Each artist taking part in the collaboration was given the freedom to utilise one of the seventeen rooms in the vacant house, wherein she could “explore and express different facets of the female experience through her artistic work”.8 Time magazine estimated that 4,000 people visited the house on its opening day, increasing to ten-thousand throughout its month-long exhibition, during which time it continued to receive extensive, mostly positive, media coverage and reviews.9 The same cannot, however, be said for Chicago’s next major art piece, The Dinner Party.

After leaving the FAP in 1974, Chicago began working on The Dinner Party, originally intending for the work to be a simple display of 25 porcelain plates hung on a wall titled Twenty-five Women Who Were Eaten Alive.10 This, however, changed early in the project after making a visit to a professional china painter who had spent three years making an elaborate porcelain dinnerwear collection for 16 people. The pieces Chicago saw were arranged in a formal place setting on the dining room table which reminded her of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (c. 1495–1498), a pinnacle of the historical cannon, leading her to the conclusion that the women had to be represented within the context of a table setting and eventually to reimagining The Dinner Party as “a reinterpretation of the Last Supper theme from the point of view of those who have prepared the meals and set the table throughout history”.11

For the first year, Chicago worked alone to finalise the guest list while designing and test firing dinner plates. Ceramicist Leonard Skuro was then employed to aid in this process and together they worked for nearly three years before being able to produce the plates predictably. Throughout this time, Susana Hill and Diane Gelon also joined the project as the head of needlework and the head of administration and fundraising respectively. Each of these three played a crucial role in the development and execution of The Dinner Party – Skuro who developed the technique used to perfect the porcelain plates, Hill who oversaw the needlework of some 400 volunteers and came up with the idea of each guest having her own personalised table cloth done in the stitches of her day, and Gelon who created a network of people from New York City, Chicago and LA who supported the project financially and otherwise. Writer Jane Gerhard notes that it was Skuro’s and Hill’s contributions in particular that enabled Chicago to “enrich the design environment surrounding each plate”.12

Quickly recognising the need for more workers to complete the project, Chicago developed two workshop options and advertised them as giving people “a chance to ‘do’ feminism for a week or a month ... to experience sisterhood directly by living and working with other women, and to participate in the larger sweep of history by contributing to Chicago’s monument to women” and that “by working on The Dinner Party they would experience firsthand the techniques and benefits of feminism”. The first option was a formal workshop where workers paid a $150 fee, later increased to $175 (equal to $1,117 in 2024) to work on the project forty hours per week for a total of eight weeks, so they could “have a feminist group experience while working on a major feminist art project”. These workers were also expected to organise and participate in weekly Thursday night meetings, referred to as ‘rap sessions’ and Conscious Raising (CR) Group sessions, both of which were to be held outside of the studio in their own lodgings, during which time they were to discuss and explore “the significance of women’s lives and women’s history and the studio’s place in bringing that history to light”.13 The second option was an open studio where volunteer workers could contribute to the project for a minimum of one eight-hour-day per week, they could extend their stay or return for any amount of time but would not be able to join CR sessions or Thursday night meetings and other elements of Chicago’s feminist collective atmosphere. Regardless of the workshop option, all workers were expected to arrange their own transportation, housing and meals and the core staff underscored “the message that volunteers who came to work on the project were expected to fend for themselves and contribute what they could without requiring a lot of hand-holding”.14

Fig 2: The Dinner Party core team, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 1979.

While the opportunity to contribute to the project was advertised as one that would strike the interest of women seeking empowerment, feminist activists, and artists interested in the group process, as Gerhard points out, “the group processes in Chicago’s studio were never designed solely to empower its members, nor were group processes ever separated from the pressing requirement to keep workers on task”. She added that, “The studio was primarily a workspace devoted to producing The Dinner Party. Within that space, feminist group process was attended to without challenging the hierarchy of control, which remained with Chicago”. In such usage of the atelier tradition and encouraging large amounts of volunteerism with little care for the social and financial circumstances of her volunteers, Chicago emulated and reinforced the art-school practices she originally aimed to dismantle. The pressure Chicago put on her group of volunteers to work faster, harder and better was intense, as was the pressure she put on them to commit more to the project. Some volunteers, such as Elaine Ireland, found this to be empowering, stating “I have rarely if ever experienced support from any other working environment to excel or be strong, serious or decisive... There was never anything to be responsible to other than filling someone’s glass or typing someone else’s words”. Others, such as Terry Blecher, who worked at the studio for two-and-a-half-years, found it to be oppressive and the demands of Chicago and her team of staff for volunteers to commit more of themselves and their time to be debilitating: “Each day while I was packing up to leave, Susan Hill, the head of the needlework loft, tried to talk me into staying longer hours and setting higher goals for myself... I felt I was being pushed and pulled and was angry at their demands on my time”.15

Many of those whom the advertisements attracted wanted to receive a feminist transformation of sorts and had romanticised the possibilities of the “feminist group experience” rhetoric that Chicago put forth but, when the stress of the sheer amount of work set in with the strain of her tight deadlines and high standards, the goals of the feminist process was expected to be set aside in favour of the project. At this point, Hill recalled, some of the workers with such hopes complained that the work was “too hard” and quit their volunteership, while others fell back on their need to be ‘nurtured’ – the result of “women’s culture that supported weakness as much as it did strength” – or on their need to be ‘mothered’ – the result of “growing up in a male-dominated society, in which women condition their daughters toward behavior that is ‘safe’ and therefore unchallenging to male domination”.16 The hostile environment that Chicago and her staff created has led many to criticise her exploitative behaviour, and rightfully so – Chicago preached of a feminist experience driven by sisterhood and making a contribution to art history, but, in reality, expected that her project be given precedence over all other thoughts and concerns.

Amelia Jones points out in her essay The Sexual Politics of The Dinner Party that “The alternative mode of production Chicago practiced in The Dinner Party studio has been judged a success or failure according to certain ideas regarding what feminist collaboration was about during the first decade of feminist art practice”, and, while it is undoubtable that many critics of her mode would have preferred a non-hierarchical, collective decision making structure and for all persons involved in the project to have been paid employees, what many fail to acknowledge is that a multitude of the most successful artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have made use of extensive teams of assistants in the form of studio employees and agents, as well as unpaid labour in the form of interns and students.17 This is true of Allan Kaprow, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Banksy, Damien Hirst, David Hockney and Jeff Koons to name a few. The difference between these artists and Chicago is that, unlike Chicago, their paid and unpaid helpers are not recognised, much less named, by the artists nor the institutions who buy, sell, collect or exhibit their work. Male artists, of course, seldom receive the same criticism as Chicago has for their army of helpers. Despite this contradiction in whether or not an artist is allowed to utilise the help of others to complete their work, debates have mostly centred around whether or not Chicago exploited her unpaid helpers and devalued their worth and whether The Dinner Party would have ever been completed if the workers had been paid. However, many have dismissed the importance of recognising the 400 volunteers and assistant’s work altogether by claiming The Dinner Party is too significant of an artwork to make such arguments worthwhile. All have failed to make the distinction that the issue is not whether Chicago gives enough credit to her helpers, but whether she truly understands their value at all – despite including the names and photographs of her employees (the volunteers are listed by their names only) in the Acknowledgement Panels of the artwork, Chicago continues to claim that “The Dinner Party was not produced by a collective; rather, I started out entirely alone”.18 Yet, what she fails to recognise is the simple facts of starting alone does not mean the work wasn’t produced by a collective, and that giving credit to her employees at all means that she, on some level, understands that the artwork would not exist as it does if it weren’t for their assistance.

This is an indication of a deeper issue further revealed in her book of the same name published in 2007, wherein she discusses at length her rationale for the project, her creative process and her continuing role in The Dinner Party display at its permanent home in the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Centre for Feminist Art (EASCFA). In continuing to refocus the artwork on herself, she ensures that she alone benefits from its installation which belies her statement that, “from my perspective, the exhibition was intended to benefit the audience, not the artist, who had paid dearly for creating it”, and, in order to martyr herself into history, she asserts that she, and she alone, is the artist who had “paid dearly”.19 Furthermore, the diary Chicago kept during The Dinner Party’s creation reveals her self-perception as a role model and her assumption that, in creating the work, she would become as exemplary as the women on whom it is focused.20 Her hopes of the artwork granting her historical importance akin to the women at the table and on the floor divulges her true reasoning for not attributing The Dinner Party to a collective – no matter how big we make our dinner table, it will never be big enough to shed light on the impact of every woman across history, our collective conscious simply does not have the ability to collect and retain that amount of information. And so, since not everyone can be invited to dinner, Chicago is making damn sure she will be.

Her diary also evinces her contradictory views on craft and ‘domestic arts’ when she expresses her ambivalence towards embroidery and other crafts: “Stuffed and dimensional fabric work is always so tacky, and I’m not sure we can make it work”, which has been followed by her public remarks on china-painters where she stated her agitation that women “wasted their talents putting roses on plates”. Given that she finds artworks using fabric as its medium to be “tacky” and that she believes artistic talent is “wasted” on china-painting, it is clear she has been unable to coalesce her identity as an artist, who is offended by the ornamentality of their ‘low-art’, with her identity as a feminist, who recognises that their art was considered as such to diminish women’s contributions to art and justify their exclusion from history.21

While most of the criticism arising from the studio environment and Chicago’s mode of production centres around accusations of her authoritarianism and her refusal to acknowledge its collaborative nature in an effort to ensure the piece retains the ability to be canonised, it is this environment and the people in it that reflects The Dinner Party’s biggest criticism: the distinct lack of non-white women honoured as guests or written onto the floor. In fact, with the exception of one African American woman and one Native American woman, all volunteers, including both the women and the few men, were white.22 In addition to this, all volunteers had to travel to the studio in Santa Barbara, California and dedicate a minimum of eight hours each week to the project in addition to weekly CR and Thursday night meetings. It is, therefore, reasonable to conclude that they would also have had to be from a middle or upper-middle-class background that would afford them the financial resources to sacrifice this time, and that other issues within the work, notably the lack of non-white women invited to the dinner, is due to the women being unable to view any history that is not their own as worthy of note or that they failed to undertake the necessary research required to unveil the role women have played in non-Western histories and recorded in non-Western practices. Such dismissal of non-Western women or practices diminishes the effectiveness of the work, inhibiting its ability to go beyond initial conscious-raising and make a genuine comment on women’s history, or that of the patriarchy, and create a new “framework for reality”.

Initially, Chicago attempted to rebut such assessments by insisting that what was perceived as her bias towards women in whom she saw her own white, American, middle-class background, was actually an indication of history’s prejudice and, without the availability of computers and internet archives, “they were bound to the limited resources about women’s history available in the 1970s”, leaving them the only option of narrowing down the initial list of roughly 3,000 women by how much of their history was verifiable and availably to them in Los Angeles.23 While the lack of non-Western historical resources is reflective of scholar’s refusal to accept historical documentation that wasn’t in the Western tradition of written records – such as performance, ceremony and oral histories – which therefore made it significantly harder to access, one must question whether or not this hurdle would have been overcome had Chicago made an effort to bring more diversity to her team of staff and volunteers, even so, as Sue Deihl pointed out in a review of the exhibition, feminist art history “did not start at zero in the 1960s or even in the nineteenth century. We had background, culture, tradition.”24

Unfortunately, it is impossible to know whether this explanation would have been accepted by twenty-first century viewers as Chicago now maintains she “never meant to suggest that the piece provided an exhaustive history”, instead, The Dinner Party was only ever meant to be “a symbolic history of women in Western civilisation”.25 The change in her rationalisation is strange but it is made even more so by the fact that it directly contradicts the documents pertaining to The Dinner Party in Chicago’s own digital archive, in which the original exhibition proposal can be found to state: “Together, the women symbolized in The Dinner Party represent both a history of the feminine in civilization and the basis for a filler concept of womanhood” and that the Heritage Floor will consist of “a sea of names of women from all countries, from all periods of times”.26 An updated exhibition proposal states that the artwork “is a carefully researched historical work which conveys all of women’s history and all of women’s culture.”27 The description of The Dinner Party being a document of “all of women’s history” is also seen in the original advertisements for volunteers which states that it “will document women’s lives, attest to women’s achievements, be a symbol of women’s aspirations and provide a vision of women’s future”, this is similarly seen in the advertisement for the first summer workshop which outlines the project as “dealing with women’s history and women’s culture”, but, again, there is no mention of a distinctly ‘western civilisation’.28 Additionally, the original proposal for an accompanying book is described as being “a two-hundred page text tracing the history of the feminine in culture from the beginning of the written word to be present”. In fact, the distinction that The Dinner Party focused on women of Western history was first seen in an advertisement for volunteers in 1977 and while Chicago made efforts to continue this distinction in subsequent documentation and interviews but failed to do so in the crucial element of the exhibition catalogue which states: “The Dinner Party is a symbolic history of women’s struggles… chosen from all countries, periods, and fields of endeavor.”29 Thus, we can conclude that Chicago did not initially intend to focus specifically on western civilisation but that she realised her limitations when the project was well and truly underway and, instead of undertaking further research to remedy her exclusions, changed her narrative to one centred on the West. At the end of this path, however, is the question of why the few non-Western women were included at all, and why Chicago didn’t replace them with a Western alternative that would fit her new narrative.

Questions of why not merely extend the table to add more women have also been dismissed by Chicago who declared “this was simply not a possibility – not after The Dinner Party was done” but offered no further explanation as to why it was not possible.30 The hint of a reason may be found in an interview with contemporary installation and crafts critic Jan Butterfield titled ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?’ and published by Mother Jones magazine two months before the exhibition opened. Chicago stated she initially intended to have thirteen seats at the table apropos of the thirteen men at The Last Supper and the thirteen women in a coven of witches, but “couldn’t represent all of the steps in history with 13 images” (note, not specified to all of the steps in western history), she doubled it to 26 “which still wasn’t enough” so went to the next multiple where she landed on 39. “As it happens”, she explained, “I was born in 1939, and I will be 39 when the piece is completed”.31 Here, again, Chicago makes clear that it is more important for The Dinner Party to reflect her life and experiences rather than that of other women from any time period or race so as to embed herself within the work, ensuring it cannot be written into art history’s narrative without also detailing her own history. To add more seats at the table would be to deny herself the ability to force history’s hand and allow it to affix her and the work by nothing else but name.

Between the first call-out for volunteers in 1974 and The Dinner Party’s installation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in March 1979, Chicago and her team of 424 workers created 39 porcelain dinner plates, table settings and runners in addition to six woven Entry Banners, seven Heritage Panels, three Acknowledgement Panels, twenty-three Documentary and Donor Panels and, after the first exhibition, The International Honor Quilt. As per the original exhibition layout outlined by Chicago in the exhibition manual, visitors would first view the Documentary Panels followed by the six Entry Banners which hung in procession for visitors to walk through before they entered the main exhibition room, this would create “an antechamber approach to the Main Exhibition Hall”.32

The twenty-three Documentary Panels, which were required to be displayed outside the exhibition hall but could be placed before or after the main portion of the artwork, described the process of making the exhibition and consisted of text and photographs of volunteers working and many of the table settings in the process of being made. These were of great importance to The Dinner Party’s message as they allowed visitors to “see with new appreciation the art, not just the craft, of the needleworker and the china painter”.33 Many galleries chose to have these panels following the main exhibition hall in order for viewers to first see the work, then the development process. As such, visitors would most often begin with the six Entry Banners which, according to Chicago’s initial installation guide, were to have red walls as a backdrop and be hung low enough so that visitors could walk through the banners, pushing them aside as they progressed.

Each of the black, red and gold banner’s unique designs feature motifs that can be found throughout other elements of The Dinner Party piece, including abstract floral, butterfly and vulva designs as well as triangles and were woven in the Aubusson tapestry technique which was popular during the Italian Renaissance for its warped loom used to make vertical tapestries, and from which women were banned. Each of the banners features a phrase that, together, acts as the work’s thesis in the form of a poem, announcing both the intention to shed light on historic women as well as Chicago’s vision for an equal society wherein women’s history is integrated into historical narratives. Together, the tapestry’s poem reads:

“And She Gathered All before Her

And She made for them A Sign to See

And lo They saw a Vision

From this day forth Like to like in All things

And then all that divided them merged

And then Everywhere was Eden Once again”.34

After walking through the Entry Banners, visitors proceeded into the main exhibition space which was required to be a darkened room with black walls and halogen lights spotlighting each of the table settings which creates a “chapel-like atmosphere”. In the centre of the room, the open triangle table sits for viewers to walk around and read the name of each of the 39 women invited to dinner, known as the “guests of honor”.35 Each guest has an individual place setting identified by a table runner on which their name is intricately embroidered with a historically accurate stitch, and each setting consists of a porcelain chalice, knife and spoon on the right, a fork that sits atop of an embroidered napkin on the left and, in the centre of the setting, a porcelain plate with a design intended to reflect the life and work of the person to whom the seat is designated.36 The ideal audience flow is to move clockwise around the table beginning with the Primordial Goddess as, in this direction, the plates begin with a two-dimensional painting on the surface which slowly lifts upwards, eventually becoming a singular three-dimensional form, an abstract vulva, breaking free from the confines of the plate and alluding to what women have had to overcome to break free from the confines of social expectations and limitations.

The table, too, is emblematic with the triangle being an ancient symbol for women and goddesses and the three equal sides here representing “the goal of feminism – an equalized world”.37 Each side, or ‘wing’, of the table sits thirteen of the guests of honour who are organised chronologically. Although The Dinner Party in its entirety aims to work against history’s linear narrative, this was a choice made by Chicago in an attempt to avoid the traps of parenthesising women’s stories or merely inserting them into already written narratives of (male) art history, instead creating an alternative structure of history that would allow for the display of women’s art in a manner unrelated to men’s.38 While Chicago’s use of The Last Supper as historical reference for The Dinner Party initiates its religious connotations, these are solidified in the table’s design: with 999 women on the Heritage Floor, 39 place settings at the table, thirteen women on each of the three sides, the table being divisible by 3 evokes the Holy Trinity of Christianity and, being raised off the floor with the top of the table reaching 93.98cm, roughly the same as a traditional altar, Chicago makes clear that this is the table at which we are to worship.39

Sitting in the first wing of the table, From Prehistory to Rome, are mythological feminine figures from various folklores who represent “pre-patriarchal societies, which were typified by the widespread worship of the Goddess”, together symbolising “the destruction of female genius in the Classical world”. The second wing of the table, From Christianity to the Reformation, documents challenges in women’s circumstances from the early days of Christianity when “women enjoyed considerable freedom, to the advent of the Reformation in the sixteenth century Europe, which brought about the dissolution of convents and the resulting loss of education and independence that had been provided to women for centuries”. The third and final wing, From the American Revolution to the Women's Revolution, charts women’s revolt against the expectations of domesticity and servitude, with imagery that was intended to “‘mourn’ the constrictions of women’s options set in motion by the Renaissance, reinforced by the Reformation, and firmly locked into place by both the laws and the attitudes of the early nineteenth century”. As the title suggests, this wing focuses almost exclusively on American and British women, with the exception of one woman, the astronomer Caroline Herschel, who was German. On the floor underneath the table, the names of 999 women are written in the Palmer penmanship method (a form of cursive handwriting developed in the U.S in the late nineteenth-century) in gold lustre on what is known as the Heritage Floor, which consists of 2,304 porcelain tiles also in the shape of triangles. Chicago states that having the names printed on the floor below the table and grouping them around one of the 39 women at the table who are from the same time period or mythological origins, suggests that in order for the achievements of the women at the table to be fully understood and appreciated, they “must be seen in the context of women’s history” as a whole.40

Fig 18: Laying names on the Heritage Floor (Chicago overseeing from above)

When continuing clockwise around the table, the final place setting the audience views is that which belongs to American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), who is the only woman at the table to have still been alive when the exhibit was first shown in 1979. From here, visitors proceed out of the main exhibition hall to view the seven Heritage Panels which offer biographical information, photographs and images which provides further contextualisation for all the 1,038 women’s lives and the impact they had on their respective societies beyond an artistic milieu. Chicago’s exhibition manual required these to be displayed in a separate room from the main exhibition hall so as to allow visitors time to reflect and also required them to be displayed against gold walls in an effort to disrupt the white cube space of traditional museums and galleries wherein the male-dominated art history is displayed.41

Fig 19: Installation view of Heritage Panels

Finally, the three Acknowledgement Panels provide the audience with photographs of the 129 employees Chicago hired to work on the project, along with a list of volunteers on the final panel. While the exhibition manual states that the panels were required to be displayed, they are not included in its permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum, despite being purchased by the museum along with the other elements, which erases their contribution to the project and supplements the criticism that Chicago exploited volunteer labour without care for their personhood nor the core goals of the feminist movement.

Fig 26: Installation view of Acknowledgement Panels

When The Dinner Party first went on display in March 1979, it was immediately met with criticism for the lack of non-Western and non-white women represented. Following its display in Houston, Texas in 1980, Chicago began trying to combat this and “emphasize the inclusive intentions of my art” by instigating the International Quilting Bee, for which she tasked the public with making and sending in small triangle quilts, measuring 60cm on all sides, that honour a woman of the maker’s choice. Eventually, over 500 quilts were made and sent to Chicago honouring the likes of Anne Frank, Ellen Powell Tiberino, Frida Kahlo, Hannah Szenes, Marie Curie and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Her team assembled a selection of these quilts into the International Honor Quilt to be displayed with the artwork from 1980 onwards.42 Given that these quilts were made by members of the public diverse in race, interests and backgrounds, who wanted to honour a woman they felt should have been included in the original elements, the women represented are significantly more diverse than those Chicago invited to dinner. As such, the Quilt is an inherently better representation of the historical contributions of women, although, after the EASCFA declined to include this in their purchase of The Dinner Party in 2002, the Quilt was subsequently donated to the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville in 2013. While the lack of diversity of the women invited to The Dinner Party and her perceived ungratefulness for the unpaid labour she greatly benefited from is a criticism Chicago argues is usually put forth by women unfamiliar with art and art history, what she seldom mentions is that this was raised by her fellow feminist artists too, who also heavily criticised her repeated use of female sexual organs as iconography.43

The use of vaginal and vulvic imagery along with merging two of the most prevalent symbols of women’s liberation – the flower and the butterfly – into a singular, abstract vulva form is characteristic of Chicago’s work, although, such imagery in an artwork claiming to honour women beyond their sexual and reproductive function, led to Chicago being called a narcissist by feminist artists and writers who argued that the repeated use of the vulva essentialises women by reducing them to their biology alone and roots their artistic practice to their anatomical features in the manner that the misogynistic historical narrative prefers.44 Although, many second wave feminist artists, including Chicago as well as Miriam Schapiro, Carolee Schneemann and Hannah Wilke to name a few, were using feminine imagery and iconography to critique this sexualisation and reduction of women to their sexual anatomy, not to replicate it.

During the 1970s, many women artist sought forms and symbols through which to valorise the feminine experience and, in doing so, to reclaim past histories and narratives.45 Chicago, too, was undertaking and advocating this search through her use of a central form, the “central core” as she called it, that opened in layered petals revealing the vaginal core that often, especially in Chicago’s work, resembled a vulva. This central core is what she identified as “my vagina, that which made me a woman”. In a 1973 article co-authored by Chicago and Schapiro and published in the Womanspace journal, the artworks of Georgia O’Keeffe, Lee Bontecou and Barbara Hepworth were used to argue the importance of ‘central core’ imagery and to argue its historical use. In the article, Chicago and Shapiro asked: “What does it feel like to be a woman? To be formed around a central core and have a secret place which can be entered and which is also a passageway, through which life emerges?”46 Such arguments represent the notion of a female ‘truth’ – the truth of how it feels and what it means to be female that accumulate into the truth of feminine experiences – that is rooted in biology.

Chicago takes this a step further in her plate designs, most of which feature a central vaginal core with four arms that stretch from the core to the edges of the plate. While this does, to some extent, reflect the image of a butterfly with a core body and four wings, the use of wings spreading from the vaginal core creates a distinct ‘X’ shape, with the slender wings manifesting not a butterfly, but the most common image of an X-chromosome – the larger of the two sex chromosomes, of which women have two and men have one in addition to another Y-chromosome. While the Y-chromosome carries few genetic markers (about 55) and mostly pertains to the development of the testis in embryo, the four legs of the X-chromosome carry 867 genes that are responsible for developing the vast majority of our traits and characteristics.47 This furthers the argument that The Dinner Party takes an essentialist approach to the depiction of women and reflects Chicago’s belief in the central core, or the middle of the X-chromosome, being the point from which all else emerges.

Embedding the ‘truth’ of the intangible feminine experience within tangible female anatomy and sexual organs has been challenged since The Dinner Party went on display with feminist writers such as Roszika Parker and Griselda Pollock instead focusing on the social, cultural and ideological construction of womanhood and femininity. Pollock in particular argued for the renunciation of vaginal imagery on the grounds that the female body, when reduced to such explicit images, is too easily mutated by male viewers into something for their own pleasure and thus failing the central purpose of feminism by falling into the trap of pleasing the male gaze. In 1981, Parker and Pollock argued that The Dinner Party is not effective feminist art because its use of vaginal imagery welcomes its exploitation, explaining that “It is easily retrieved and co-opted by male culture because [it does] not rupture radically meanings and connotations of woman in art as body, as sexual, as nature, as object for male possession”.48 Chicago has attempted to deploy the same signs and systems used to uphold patriarchal and religious narratives in order to create an alternative heritage but has failed to undertake both the artistic exploration and self-reflection required to rupture the meaning of these and the research required to forge beyond established narratives that would allow her to provide a genuinely groundbreaking statement on women’s art and history. Ultimately, Chicago “assumes that by using old packaging for new materials one presents an entirely new appearance, which in effect, ignores the problem”, and makes The Dinner Party not a new framework of reality, but a shrine to the patriarchy and a historical narrative wherein to be a woman is to be a sexualised object of desire.49 It is possible, however, that she has in fact succeeded in her goal and the framework she set out to create was never meant to be that of women nor feminism, but of herself. Such an argument is supported by her habitual refocusing of 1970s feminist art to The Dinner Party, and therefore to herself, which not only shows a lack of engagement with the artworks of her contemporaries and the overall feminist art movement, but also ensures there is less awareness of the works of feminist art which do construct a new framework, such as Mary Beth Edelson’s Some Living American Women Artists (1972) which similarly highlights historical women through the use of The Last Supper imagery, Miriam Schapiro’s Dollhouse (1972) that was originally exhibited in Womanhouse and uses fabric and crafts to undermine the positioning of women within the home or Cindy Sherman’s 69 Untitled Film Stills (1978) through which the artist challenges the male gaze and its sexualised portrayal of women.

While there is no shortage of criticisms to be found in The Dinner Party, or in Chicago herself, the most pressing seems to be its lack of awareness – for the history it conveys, the narratives it reinforces and the reality of its effect. Chicago’s refusal to maintain the autocratic control she retained in her studio and accept that her vetoing of other’s opinions places the fault firmly with her, indicates that either she doesn’t believe them to be true, and they therefore don’t matter, or, that she is perfectly aware of these shortcomings but doesn’t view them as such because they do exactly what she hoped they would – convey her history and reinforce the narrative of her artistic practice, resulting in her admittance into the canon.

1. National Museum of Women in the Arts, “Mary Beale”, NMWA, 2024 (date of publication), https://nmwa.org/art/artists/mary-beale/

2. Library of Congress Research Guides, “Berthe Morisot”, LOC, 2024 (date of publication), https://guides.loc.gov/feminism-french-women-history/famous/berthe-morisot

3. Cindy Nemser, “Lee Krasner’s Paintings, 1946-49”, in Artforum, 12, no. 4 (1973): 61-65, https://www.artforum.com/features/lee-krasners-paintings-1946-49-210203/

4. Angelica Villa, “Photographer Lee Miller’s Subversive Career Took Her from Vogue to War-Torn Germany”, ArtNews, 19 March, 2021 (date of publication), https://www.artnews.com/feature/lee-miller-photography-vogue-man-ray-1234587240/

5. Gail Levin, "Becoming Judy Chicago: Feminist Class" in Entering the Picture: Judy Chicago, the Fresno Feminist Art Program, and the Collective Visions of Women Artists, ed. Jill Fields (New York: Routledge, 2012), 25-45.

6. Levin, "Becoming Judy Chicago”.

7. Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, “Womenhouse catalogue essay”, 1972.

8. “Reverberating Feminisms: Chronologies of Feminist Art Movements at CalArts: Feminist Art Program (1971–1974)”, CalArts Library, July 30, 2024 (date of publication), https://library.calarts.edu/c.php?g=1340092&p=9958608

9. Time, “Art: Bad-Dream House”, Time Magazine, 20 March, 1972 (date of publication), https://time.com/archive/6875629/art-bad-dream-house/

10. Edward Lucie-Smith, “The Dinner Party”, in Judy Chicago: An American Vision (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000), 58-80.

11. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, “The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago”, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

12. Jane Gerhard, Judy Chicago and the Practice of 1970s Feminism”, in Feminist Studies, vol 37, no. 3 (2011): 591-618.

13. Gerhard, “Judy Chicago and the Practice of 1970s Feminism”.

14. ibid, p.605

15. ibid, p.608

16. Judy Chicago, Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1975, republished 2006).

17. Amelia Jones, “Introduction”, in The Sexual Politics of The Dinner Party: A Critical Context, ed. Amelia Jones (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 103-04.

18. Judy Chicago, “The Joy of Creating”, in The Dinner Party, ed. Mindy Eerner and Mary Scott (London: Merrell Publishers, 2007), 9-27.

19. Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party, (London: Merrell Publishers Ltd, 2007).

20. Chicago, The Dinner Party.

21. Lauren Rabinovitz, “Issues of Feminist Aesthetics: Judy Chicago and Joyce Wieland”, in Feminism-Art-Theory: An Anthology 1968-2000, ed. Hilary Robinson (London: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 436-451.

22. Gerhard, “Judy Chicago and the Practice of 1970s Feminism”.

23. Deskins, “Revealing Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party”.

24. Sue Diehl, ""The Dinner Party." San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, March 17 to June 17 1979", in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies vol 4, no. 2 (1979): 74–76, https://doi.org/10.2307/3346546.

25. Chicago, The Dinner Party.

26. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.35, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$35i

27. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.28, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$28i

28. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.5, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$5i

29. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.3, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:436454233$3i

30. Judy Chicago, "The Joy of Creating".

31. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.26, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:436454233$26i

32. Deskins, “Revealing Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party”.

33. Chicago, The Dinner Party.

34. ibid.

35. ibid.

36. Deskins, “Revealing Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party".

37. ibid.

38. Chicago, Through the Flower.

39. Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.42, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:435103513$42i

40. Chicago, The Dinner Party.

41. Deskins, “Revealing Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party”.

42. Chicago, The Dinner Party.

43. ibid.

44. Rabinovitz, “Issues of Feminist Aesthetics”.

45. Whitney Chadwick, “Feminist Art in North America and Great Britain”, in Women, Art, and Society, 5th ed. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012), 355-378.

46. Clare Johnson, "Feminist Narratives and Unfaithful Repetition: Hannah Wilke's Starification Object Series", in Femininity, Time and Feminist Art (England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 77-100.

47. Marina Bastaand Ashish M. Pandya, “Genetics, X-Linked Inheritance”, National Library of Medicine, May 1, 2023 (date of publication), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557383/

48. Chadwick, "New Directions: A Partial Overview".

49. Rabinovitz, "Issues of Feminist Aesthetics”.

Figure 1: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (1974–1979) (installation view). Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 91.4 x 1,463 x 1,463cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 2: Some core staff of The Dinner Party photographed at the work’s inaugural exhibition, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1979. In the background a photo mural shows Judy Chicago’s 39th birthday party in July 1978 at her Santa Monica studio. From left to right, back row: Shannon Hogan, Mary McNally, Neil Olson, Judy Chicago; second row: L.A. Hassing (formerly Linda Ann Olson), Kate Amend, Juliet Myers, Helene Simich, Sharon Kagan, Leonard Skuro; third row down: Thea Litsios, Elaine Ireland, Kathleen Schneider, Judye Keyes, Susan Hill, Diane Gelon, Anita Johnson; front row: Ann Isolde, Terry Blecher, Peter Bunzick. Photo courtesy Through the Flower Archive.

Figure 3: Fist volunteer advertisement (front), Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.4, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$4i

Figure 4: Fist volunteer advertisement (back), Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.3, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$3i

Figure 5: The Dinner Party Needlework Loft, Santa Monica, California. Photo courtesy Through the Flower Archive.

Figure 6: The Dinner Party Thursday Night Potluck, Santa Monica, California. Photo courtesy Through the Flower Archive.

Figure 7: Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.36, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$35i

Figure 8: Judy Chicago Papers. The Dinner Party. Follow-up. Press kit, ‘The Dinner Party: a three-part concept by Judy Chicago’, n.d. MC 502, folder 85.15, Seq.36, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:437009292$36i

Figure 9: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 1 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 10: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 2 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 11: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 3 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 12: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 4 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 13: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 5 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 14: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party Entry Banner 6 (1974–1979). Yarn and woven tapestry, 170.7 x 109.7cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 15: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Table Wing 1) (1974–1979) (installation view). Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 91.4 x 1,463cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 16: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Table Wing 2) (1974–1979) (installation view). Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 91.4 x 1,463cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 17: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Table Wing 3) (1974–1979) (installation view). Ceramic, porcelain, textile, 91.4 x 1,463cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 18: Volunteers laying out names on the Heritage Floor with Judy Chicago watching from above. Photo courtesy Through the Flower Archive.

Figure 19: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Heritage Panel 2-4) (1974–1979) (installation view). Hand-coloured photo mural, 146.05 x 180cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 20: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Heritage Panel 1) (1974–1979). Hand-coloured photo mural, 146.05 x 180cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 21: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Heritage Panel 4) (1974–1979). Hand-coloured photo mural, 146.05 x 180cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 22: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Heritage Panel 7) (1974–1979). Hand-coloured photo mural, 146.05 x 180cm. Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 26: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Acknowledgement Panels 1-3) (1974–1979) (installation view). 240.7 x 122.5 cm. UCLA Armand Hammer Museum of Art. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Photo © Donald Woodman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Figure 27: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Primordial Goddess plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 38.1 x 35.6 x 2.5 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Figure 28: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Virginia Woolf plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 36 x 36.8 x 11.1 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Figure 29: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Georgia O'Keeffe plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 36.8 x 35.6 x 12.1 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Figure 30: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Fertile Goddess plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 35.6 x 35.6 x 2.5 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Figure 31: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Elizabeth R. plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 35.6 x 35.6 x 2.5 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Figure 32: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party (Mary Wollstonecraft plate) (1974–1979). Porcelain with overglaze enamel (China paint), 36 x 36 x 7.6 cm. Brooklyn Museum, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum, New York, U.S.A, Gift of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. © Judy Chicago.

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party and 1970s Feminist Art

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