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Chicago, Judy

Chapter · January 2003

DOI: 10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T016419

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Grove Art Online

Chicago [Cohen], Judy

(b Chicago, IL, 20 July 1939).

American installation artist, writer, and educator. Chicago became involved in the art world in the
1960s and is one of the originators of feminist art education in the USA. Born Judy Cohen and
brought up in Chicago by socialist Jewish parents, she studied at University of California, Los
Angeles, where she became a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received a BA in 1962 and a MA in
1964. She remained in California where she began working in the Los Angeles–based Finish–Fetish
style, a variation of West Coast Minimalism, and her piece Rainbow Pickett (destr. by the artist but
re-created in 2004) was included in Primary Structures, the 1966 exhibition curated by Kynaston
McShine at the Jewish Museum in New York City, which introduced Minimalism. In 1969 she started
Judy Chicago: The Dinner Party, the first feminist art education programme at California State University, Fresno, where she remained
mixed media, 1979 (Brooklyn
Museum);… until 1971; in 1970 she changed her last name to Chicago to remove the patronym and celebrate her
independence from patriarchy. Then, she co-founded the Feminist Art Program with artist MIRIAM SCHAPIRO at the California Institute
of the Arts (CalArts), in Valencia, which ran from 1971 until 1973. With their students, they created the massive WOMANHOUSE; a
series of feminist installations and performances inside a soon-to-be demolished mansion, on view from 30 January through to 28
February 1972, which had a broad and lasting impact on feminist art. Chicago, alongside art historian Arlene Raven and graphic
designer Sheila de Bretteville, co-founded the Los Angeles Woman’s Building in 1973, an influential centre for feminist art activities,
where she co-founded the Feminist Studio Workshop. From 1974 through to 1978, she focused her energies on producing The
Dinner Party (San Francisco, CA, MOMA), a large sculptural installation requiring hundreds of volunteer hours to create a
triangular table with embroidered place settings and ceramic plates (see fig.) for 39 famous historical women (including artist
Georgia O’Keeffe as the one living guest). The installation became the centerpiece in 2007 of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for
Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. In 1978 she founded Through the Flower, a non-profit arts organization to support her work.
Chicago’s The Birth Project (1980–85), and The Holocaust Project (1987–93), which she created with her husband, photographer
Donald Woodman, are also large-scale installations.

See images tab for additional illustrations.

Writings
The Dinner Party: A Symbol of our Heritage (New York, 1979)

Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (New York, 1982)

Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (New York, 1993)

Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist (New York, 1996)

The Dinner Party (New York, 1996)

with E. Lucie-Smith Women and Art: Congested Territory (New York, 1998)

The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation (London, 2007)

with F. Borzello and J. F. Gerhard The Dinner Party: Restoring Women to History, foreword by A. L. Lehman (New York, 2014)
 Bibliography
D. Frankel: Painting, Sculpture and Photographs of Judy Chicago (Fullerton, CA, 1970)

E. Lucie-Smith: Judy Chicago: An American Vision (New York, 2000)

Judy Chicago (exh. cat. by L. R. Lippard, E. Lucie-Smith, and V. D. Thompson Wylder, Washington, DC, N. Mus. Women A., 2002–3)

G. Levin: Becoming Judy Chicago: A Biography of the Artist (New York, 2007)

J. F. Gerhard: The Dinner Party: Judy Chicago and the Power of Popular Feminism, 1970–2007 (Athens, GA, 2013)

Anne K. Swartz

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