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10/04/2002 "Finally-Judy Chicago's work Honored"

Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party to Receive Permanent Home in the Brooklyn Museum of Art - Brooklyn, NY April 23, 2002

The Brooklyn Museum of Art today announced the gift of Judy Chicago's iconic feminist installation The Dinner Party from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. The Dinner Party will be on temporary view from September 20, 2002 through February 9, 2003 in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery on the fifth floor and will be permanently installed in 2004 on the fourth floor of the Museum.

Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman said, "We are extremely grateful to The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation and to its president and BMA Trustee Dr. Elizabeth A. Sackler for making this truly remarkable gift to the collection and for providing The Dinner Party with a permanent home where it will be seen by generations to come. An extraordinary work of art, it is as relevant today as it was when it was first created in the 1970s."

"It has been an honor and a joy to guide The Dinner Party back to the Brooklyn Museum, where it was seen more than two decades ago. It is my hope that the permanent housing of The Dinner Party provides ongoing visual joy and intellectual opportunities for all who come to visit. It is a monumental work that I feel certain shall anchor its place in history, awaken our sensibilities to the past, and inspire possibilities for the future," stated Dr. Sackler.

Since it was first presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979, The Dinner Party has been seen by more than a million people at fifteen venues in six countries on three continents. The Brooklyn Museum, where it was on view October 18, 1980 through January 18, 1981, was the fourth venue. The Dinner Party is a symbolic history of women in Western civilization.

Triangular in configuration, The Dinner Party employs numerous mediums including ceramics, china painting, and needlework to honor women's achievements.

An immense open table covered with fine white cloths is set with thirty-nine place settings, thirteen on each 48-foot side, each commemorating a goddess, historic personage, or other important woman.

Ishtar, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, Theodora of Byzantium, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Sojourner Truth, Sacajawea, Susan B. Anthony, Emily Dickinson, and Virginia Woolf are among these 39 women selected by Judy Chicago to have their own place settings at the table. The Dinner Party rests on a porcelain surface, the Heritage Floor, inscribed with the names of 999 women.

The Dinner Party took more than five years to complete. For two years (1974-1976) Judy Chicago worked alone in her Santa Monica, California studio, conceiving and executing her extraordinary vision. The undertaking proved so ambitious that eventually 400 women and a few men from all over the country became involved, volunteering their time, from one month to several years.

"One of my aims in creating this work was to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women's achievements are repeatedly written out of the historic record and a cycle of repetition that results in generation after generation of women struggling for insights and freedoms that are too often quickly forgotten or erased again.

I am honored that The Dinner Party has found a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Elizabeth Sackler's act of generosity and vision demonstrates that one individual can still make a difference, in this case, interceding in history to help ensure an ineradicable place for women," stated Judy Chicago.

There is a new book just out called Judy ChicagoEdited by Elizabeth A. Sackler

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