Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party

This fall saw the resolution of a longstanding art world injustice. After almost 25 years, one of the most pivotal works of the 20th century ended its nomadic existence and found a permanent home in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Judy Chicago's “The Dinner Party” will be on view through the winter and then will have a permanent space in 2004 as part of the Museum's new Sackler Center for Feminist Art.

“The Dinner Party” in its relatively short lifetime has gained a notoriety, amassed a body of criticism and accrued a set of mythologies like few other works of art. It has been rightfully recognized as one of the key works of feminist art, inspiring in turn countless other works of art and scholarship, and has influenced hundreds of thousands of women and men. At the same time, it has continued to be reviled and to receive hostile criticism to a scathing degree, often from sources that one would not suspect.

“The Dinner Party” consists of a three-part installation. The viewer initially approaches a hallway adorned with embroidered welcoming banners, each bearing a line from a poem composed by Judy Chicago. The next room consists of the part of the exhibit that many people have heard of: a triangular table set upon a ceramic tile base. Each side of the triangle houses 13 place settings; each place setting is dedicated to a woman, mythological or historical who has been left out of the greater historical narrative. Thus 39 women are represented altogether.

Each place setting is made up of a lusterware chalice, fork, knife, and gold-trimmed napkin. These are set around a china plate that bears a design intended to symbolize its subject in some way. These are all set upon an elaborately embroidered runner, the front of which bears the name of the attendee and the long-draped back of which conveys scenes and designs that represent her. The settings are arranged in roughly chronological fashion beginning with the Primordial Goddess and ending with Georgia O'Keefe. At each corner is what Chicago has labeled “millennium samplers,” embroidered patterns created with different types of needlework. The entire table complex is set upon a pedestal comprised of 2,304 tiles, and inscribed with 999 additional women's names in gold