The Dinner Party

The Dinner Party is an installation artwork by American feminist artist Judy Chicago. There are 39 elaborate place settings on a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Kali, Judith, Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony, and Georgia O'Keeffe are among the symbolic guests.

Each place setting includes a hand-painted china plate, ceramic cutlery and chalice, and a napkin with an embroidered gold edge. Each plate, except the ones corresponding to Sojourner Truth and Ethel Smyth, depicts a brightly colored, elaborately styled vulvar form. The settings rest on intricately embroidered runners, executed in a variety of needlework styles and techniques. The table stands on The Heritage Floor, made up of more than 2,000 white luster-glazed triangular tiles, each inscribed in gold scripts with the name of one of 998 women and one man who have made a mark on history. (The man, Kresilas, was included by mistake, as he was thought to have been a woman called Cresilla.)

The Dinner Party was produced from 1974 to 1979 as a collaboration and first exhibited in 1979. Despite art world resistance, it toured to 16 venues in six countries on three continents to a viewing audience of 15 million. It was retired to storage from 1988 until 1996, as it was beginning to suffer from constant traveling. In 2007, it became a permanent exhibit in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

The Dinner Party was created by artist Judy Chicago, with the assistance of numerous volunteers, with the goal to "end the ongoing cycle of omission in which women were written out of the historical record." According to the artist, “The Dinner Party suggests that women have the capacity to be prime symbol-makers, to remake the world in our own image and likeness” (SNYDER, 1981, p. 31).

The table is triangular and measures 48 feet (14.63 m) on each side. There are 13 place settings on each of the table's sides, making 39 in all. Wing I honors women from Prehistory to the Roman Empire, Wing II honors women from the beginnings of Christianity to the Reformation and Wing III from the American Revolution to feminism.

Each place setting features a table runner embroidered with the woman's name and images or symbols relating to her accomplishments, with a napkin, utensils, a glass or goblet, and a plate. Many of the plates feature a butterfly- or flower-like sculpture representing a vulva. A cooperative effort of female and male artisans, The Dinner Party celebrates traditional female accomplishments such as textile arts (weaving, embroidery, sewing) and china painting, which have been framed as craft or domestic art, as opposed to the more culturally valued, male-dominated fine arts.

While the piece is composed of typical craftwork such as needlepoint and china painting and normally considered low art, "Chicago made it clear that she wants The Dinner Party to be viewed as high art, that she still subscribes to this structure of value: 'I'm not willing to say a painting and a pot are the same thing,' she has stated. 'It has to do with intent. I want to make art.'"

The white floor of triangular porcelain tiles, called the Heritage Floor, is inscribed with the names of a further 998 notable women (and one man, Kresilas, an ancient Greek sculptor, mistakenly included as he was thought to have been a woman called Cresilla), each associated with one of the place settings.