Judy Chicago at NMWA, Washington DC - National Museum of Woman in the Arts

Judy Chicago
National Museum of Woman in the Arts, Washington DC
October 11, 2002 - January 5, 2003

Judy Chicago, one of America’s artistic trailblazers and a pioneer of the feminist art movement, is the subject of an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA). The exhibition features over 90 works from the 1960s to the present, and includes selections from Judy Chicago’s best-known work as well as rarely seen early and recent autobiographical pieces.

Judy Chicago’s monumental installation The Dinner Party (1979), a symbolic history of women in Western civilization in visual and textual form, has become an icon of the 20th century. Her two autobiographies, Through the Flower and Beyond the Flower, have been sold around the world. The NMWA exhibition provides an overview of the artist’s career in the following sections: Early California Years, 1964-71; Breakthrough Years, 1972-75; The Dinner Party, 1974-79; Birth Project, 1980-85; Powerplay, 1983-86; Holocaust Project, 1985-93; and The End of the Century, 1993-2000.

At a time when women artists had very few role models and even fewer opportunities for recognition and success, Judy Chicago looked to her female forebears for inspiration and began to explore identity and other issues from a woman’s perspective. She established the first feminist art program in 1970 at Fresno State College in California. In 1972 she collaborated with Miriam Schapiro under the sponsorship of Cal Arts on the groundbreaking art/performance space Womanhouse, continuing to generate a great deal of debate with her art and activist stance. Judy Chicago’s art also underwent a transformation at this time as her early paintings and sculptures gave way in the late 1960s to large spray-painted canvases of centered geometric forms —works celebrating women’s spirit, power, and generative strength.

With The Dinner Party, Judy Chicago distinguished herself further as an artist determined to change the way women, and women artists in particular, are remembered and regarded. Going against traditional societal taboos in choosing the vulva as her main symbolic image, Judy Chicago also rejected art hierarchies by working with craft as well as fine arts, and foregrounded the idea of artistic collaboration rather than lone artistic genius. The Dinner Party solidified Judy Chicago’s place as a feminist and has become an icon of feminist art.

Her next large work, Birth Project, celebrates women’s role as the giver of life, with 150 needleworkers showcasing once again Judy Chicago’s collaborative interests. The Powerplay series explores the distortion that power has when it dominates men's lives and its wrenching emotional effects on both sexes. In the Holocaust Project, Judy Chicago worked with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, to use the Holocaust as a point of departure in addressing the suffering of all victims of genocide. Autobiographical and recent work reveals the emotions of the artist at different points in her career, and includes her recent Song of Songs (1998).

Judy Chicago is presented at NMWA through the generous sponsorship of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. The foundation seeks to raise awareness of the contributions of women in all areas of art and culture with specific focus on feminist art. According to Elizabeth A. Sackler, "This exhibition is a glimpse of the breadth and range of Judy Chicago’s oeuvre, her groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and to women. She has fought the status quo with the same single-minded tenacity, resilience, and gumption with which she has conducted her life and forged her life’s work."

The exhibition’s consulting curators are John Bullard, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Viki Wylder, curator of education at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. Liaison curator is NMWA Chief Curator Susan Fisher Sterling. An accompanying book, Judy Chicago, with more than 100 full-color illustrations will be available in NMWA’s museum shop. Spanning four decades of Chicago’s work, the book features an interview with the artist by renowned feminist art critic and historian Lucy R. Lippard and biographical text by Wylder.

Coinciding with NMWA’s exhibition, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party will be exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from September 20, 2002 through February 9, 2003. This gift to the Brooklyn Museum of Art from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation will be permanently installed in 2004.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS
1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington DC
www.nmwa.org

Updated 05.07.2019