The Dinner Party Article Index for
The
Website Links For
Dinner
 

Information About

The Dinner Party




''The Dinner Party'' is a work by Feminist artist Judy Chicago depicting place settings for 39 mythical and historical Famous Women throughout history. It was produced from 1974 to 1979 by a collaboration of many individual women and first exhibited in 1979 .

Judy Chicago stated the purpose of the work as ''"The Dinner Party was meant to end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record."''

The table is triangular and measures forty-eight feet on each side. Each place setting features a placemat / tablecloth with the woman's name and artworks relating to the woman's life, along with a napkin, utensils, glass / goblet, and a plate. The plates all feature a Butterfly - or Flower -like sculpture, representing the woman's Vulva . "The Dinner Party elevates female achievement in Western history to a heroic scale traditionally reserved for men.

The white floor of triangular porcelain tiles is inscribed with the names of 999 other notable women.

Since 2002 the home of the work has been the Brooklyn Museum Of Art which purchased it through a gift from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation . Its permanent exhibition there is due to begin in 2006 .


WOMEN REPRESENTED IN THE WORK

The first wing of the triangular table has place settings for women from Primordial Goddesses of prehistory through to Hypatia of classical Rome. This section symbolises the emergence and decline of the Classical World .

The second wing begins with Marcella, and denotes the rise of Christianity . It concludes with Anna van Schurman in the seventeenth century.

The third wing represents the Age Of Revolution s. It begins with Anne Hutchinson and moves through the twentieth century to the final places paying tribute to Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keeffe,

The 39 women with places at the table are:-

Wing I: From Prehistory to the Roman Empire

1. Primordial Goddess

2. Fertile Goddess

3. Ishtar

4. Kali

5. Snake Goddess

6. Sophia

7. Amazon

8. Hatshepsut

9. Judith

10. Sappho

11. Aspasia

12. Boudica

13. Hypatia


Wing II: From the Beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation

14. Marcella

15. Saint Bridget

16. Theodora

17. Hrosvitha

18. Trotula Of Salerno

19. Eleanor Of Aquitaine

20. Hildegard Of Bingen

21. Petronilla De Meath

22. Christine De Pisan

23. Isabella D'Este

24. Elizabeth R

25. Artemisia Gentileschi

26. Anna Van Schurman


Wing III: From the American to the Women’s Revolution

27. Anne Hutchinson

28. Sacajawea

29. Caroline Herschel

30. Mary Wollstonecraft

31. Sojourner Truth

32. Susan B. Anthony

33. Elizabeth Blackwell

34. Emily Dickinson

35. Ethel Smyth

36. Margaret Sanger

37. Natalie Barney

38. Virginia Woolf

39. Georgia O'Keeffe


The names of 999 more are represented in the floor tiles.


REFERENCE

  • Chicago, Judy, ''The Dinner Party'', Penguin, Rev Ed edition (March 1, 1996) ISBN 0140244379



EXTERNAL LINKS