Roslyn Group for Arts & Letters.

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The Dinner Party was a conceptual art installation conceived and executed by artist Judy Chicago. The room-sized sculpture combined several media to interpret women's history through the theme of a set dining table. Each of the thirty-nine settings highlighted the contributions of a notable female historical subject, encompassing the fields of science, medicine, government, women's rights, religion, mythology, visual arts, and music. Ultimately, over one million visitors viewed the artwork throughout fifteen exhibitions in six different countries between 1974-1981. On July 30, 1939 Judith Cohen was born to a middle-class secular Jewish family in Chicago. Her father was federal employee and labor activist and her mother studied dance and worked in health care. Cohen studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and earned a BFA in 1962 and an MFA in 1964 from the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1969 she changed her name to Judy Chicago as a gesture of resistance against patriarchal naming practices. From an early stage she engaged feminism and sexuality in her work. She received negative feedback for this practice in art school, yet she persisted to pioneer feminist art practices and develop feminist pedagogy in her teaching activities. Chicago refined and institutionalized her teaching methods in the development of a program at California State University at Fresno for women artists. Her career as an artist continued to flourish as both a teacher and an artist. Throughout the next decades, she conceived numerous projects, both massive and intimate, exhibited extensively, and held numerous visiting artistships and teaching appointments. Under the direction of Chicago, over 400 artist contributors worked together to produce The Dinner Party installation after five years of planning and production. The sculpture featured an open triangular table, with each side measuring nearly fifty feet in length. Each setting featured an elaborately embroidered runner highlighting the needlework techniques contemporary with the subject's own time period. The runners, which identified the featured woman, backed an oversized dinner plate featuring a unique representation of a butterfly. Inside the table, an enormous span of porcelain identifies 999 women who proved influential in the lives of the 39 principle characters. The intended effect of the exhibit was not only to highlight individual women, but also to demonstrate the collective efforts of womankind. The Dinner Party Project encompassed the planning and execution of an exhibition of the installation in Chicago, and was the first project undertaken by The Roslyn Group for Arts and Letters. In 1979, a group of Chicago women found themselves inspired by Judy Chicago's book Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Women Artist. Committed to bringing to the work to Chicago, they incorporated as a non-profit organization and undertook a rigorous search for an appropriate venue and financial support. After two years of planning work, The Dinner Party was exhibited at the Franklin Building at 720 South Dearborn in the south loop of downtown Chicago. It opened on September 13, 1981, for an extended run of nearly six months, and hosted over 70,000 visitors. After the Chicago exhibit, the installation went on to several other exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and other venues in the United States. After several years of searching for a suitable and willing permanent home, The Brooklyn Museum agreed to open a permanent exhibit in 2006.

From the description of The Dinner Party Project records, 1978-1984. (University of Illinois-Chicago Library). WorldCat record id: 59714932

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creatorOf Roslyn Group for Arts & Letters. The Dinner Party Project records, 1978-1984. University of Illinois at Chicago Library, UIC
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associatedWith Chicago, Judy, 1939- person
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Active 1978

Active 1984

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