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Join us for a virtual tour of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party by Curator Carmen Hermo. An icon of twentieth-century art, a watershed moment in feminist art and thinking, and one of the most popular artworks in our collection,  The Dinner Party celebrates the achievements of 1,038 women in Western culture, and sits at the heart of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. It’s also a perpetually popular destination for intergenerational family visits. We wish all mothers and caretakers a Happy Mothers Day! 

Judy Chicago’s monumental The Dinner Party was created between 1974–79. The artwork takes the form of a meticulously executed banquet table set for 39 individual women; each woman is honored with a hand-painted and formed ceramic plate, and an elaborate needlework runner. On the hand-cast Heritage Floor, the names of 999 other women stream out in relation to those at the table, visually representing women’s vast contributions in nearly every aspect of history.

Before entering the installation, you are greeted—and guided— by six woven tapestries, decorated with abstract imagery that evoke motifs on The Dinner Party. They convey Chicago’s vision for an equitable world, where women’s histories and perspectives are valued.

“And She Gathered All before Her,

And She made for them A Sign to See,

And Lo They saw a Vision…”

The Entry Banners are the first thing you see, but were the final objects made for The Dinner Party, woven at the San Francisco Tapestry Workshop in a feminist adaptation of Renaissance techniques.

Photo: Donald Woodman, ARS

Entering The Dinner Party’s purpose-built gallery (designed to protect fragile textiles on long-term view), the striking, iridescent ceramics of the plates and Heritage Floor catch the eye— it’s immediately conveyed that this massive artwork is meant to elevate and honor women’s histories.

Image courtesy Through the Flower Archive and Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago recalls that her education, from childhood to grad school in the 1960s, both purposefully and passively conveyed to her that women did not contribute to civilization. Part of the project of The Dinner Party was an immense research effort, to provide accurate information and context about women in history. In this image, Chicago and other workers research some 3,000 women, informing the final selection of 1,038 in the artwork.

Chicago wanted to re-write the history that she was taught: The Dinner Party subverts the dominant narrative of Western civilization by re-telling it through women’s achievements.

© Judy Chicago, Photo: Donald Woodman, ARS.

Each woman’s unique place setting shares these components:

A hand-painted ceramic plate, featuring Chicago’s vulvar “central core imagery”

An embroidered runner, with historically accurate needleworking techniques from that woman’s era 

And a golden ceramic chalice, lustrous cutlery, and napkin as accents.

Here, “historically accurate needlework” meant that The Dinner Party studio workers actually skinned a deer themselves, in a nod to prehistoric living!

Each wing features 13 women. The 8th place setting is dedicated to Hatshepsut, who was a Pharaoh of Egypt some 3500 years ago, and known as one of Ancient Egypt's most successful leaders, establishing vast trade networks and commissioning hundreds of buildings and monuments during her prosperous, peaceful reign.

© Judy Chicago, Photo: Donald Woodman, ARS

Judy Chicago valued accuracy as well as visual symbolic meaning. Brooklyn Museum curators and Egyptologists Ed Bleiberg ad Yekaterina Barbash translate the embroidered hieroglyphics for us:

That first row reads “Effective One, Living One, Favored One of the City (Thebes).”

On the second wing, a place is set for the writer, philosopher, and mystic nun Hildegarde of Bingen, a 12th century polymath renowned to this day for her musical and lyrical chant compositions.

Judy Chicago drew on medieval art’s clarity of form, which educated illiterate believers about the Bible. The Dinner Party helps inform viewers who may not know women’s historical contributions.

Every element of The Dinner Party conveys a distinct detail about the woman represented, or a symbolic reference to all women’s oppression and erasure.

If you were standing in front of Hildegarde’s place setting, you wouldn’t be able to see this amazing embroidery on the back of the runner depicting her visionary drawing. Instead, you can only see it by moving around the table, and reading “through” and “across” history, alluding to how we all must work to question and expand our collective stories. 

Personally, my favorite moment is the stunning runner for astronomer Caroline Herschel. Judy Chicago’s design, executed with lyrical skill in crewel embroidery by ecclesiastical embroiderer Marjorie Biggs, gives a spinning sense of Herschel’s telescopic view of our universe. 

Curatorial assistant, Jenee Daria describes this place setting: 

“Mary Wollstonecraft authored ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,’ 1792, considered the earliest and most important treatise advocating for equality and education for women. The butterfly and vulvar motif on Wollstonecraft's china-painted plate, and its multidimensionality, represent Wollstonecraft's will and intelligence which metaphorically undulate by the strength of such vibrant hues and the power of her testimony.”

“The embroidered runner incorporates meticulous needlework, petitpoint, embroidery, crochet, and stumpwork to create a visual narrative of Wollstonecraft's life and an embodiment of the limitations of her environment.”  - Jenee Daria 

Here, Wollstonecraft stands outside a schoolhouse where children are taught “The education of girls is a right not a privilege!” Her youngest, Mary Shelley, would go on to write the literary classic “Frankenstein.”  

The 39th and final woman at The Dinner Party is artist Georgia O’Keeffe. The dramatic dimensionality of the plate symbolizes her artistic liberation, as well as her great success in the early 20th century amidst a hostile and male-dominated art world. Ending The Dinner Party with an artist with such a pivotal influence on feminist artists of her day, Judy Chicago emphasizes the importance of knowing one’s lineage.

Judy Chicago worked on The Dinner Party alone at first, and as the concept evolved into its truly epic scale, more than 400 collaborators worked to complete it, an undertaking that took five years. This detail is from one of three “Acknowledgement Panels” that traveled with The Dinner Party and are preserved at the Brooklyn Museum and available on our website. 

Despite this, the scheduled museum tour was cancelled after a wave of dismissive reviews from art critics: some saw the work as “kitsch,” and even “pornographic” due to its vulvar motifs. This replicated the rejection women have faced across history, while proving how radical Chicago’s reclamation of vulvar forms really was— even for the presumably avant-garde art world.

Image caption: Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives

Here we see people lining up at Brooklyn Museum—we hosted The Dinner Party in 1980-81 thanks to local activism and fundraising efforts. It was so popular, it marked the first time we rolled out timed tickets!

© Judy Chicago, Photo: Donald Woodman, ARS

In 2002, the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation gifted The Dinner Party to the Brooklyn Museum, establishing a plan for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which opened to the public in 2007. We are so lucky to have this epic and important work on permanent view at the heart of our feminist galleries, and hope we can soon welcome you back to explore it in person for years to come.

Want to know more? Access the Brooklyn Museum’s rich online resource guide here. Including detailed entries on all 1,038 women featured in the work!

Thank you for joining us on our tour of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. Join us next week for another tour of our galleries! 

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