Judy Chicago Named As One Who Changed the World
LewAllen Contemporary
01-16-06
Santa Fe, New Mexico – The same woman who created, in the words of esteemed art critic Arthur Danto, “one of the major artistic monuments of the second half of the twentieth century” has now been named as one whose art has “changed the world.”
Danto was referring to Judy Chicago’s landmark installation, The Dinner Party, which opens next year in its permanent home in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. Now adding to that accolade, as well as a long list of other recent honors, an article in the current issue of Reform Judaism magazine names artist Judy Chicago as one of eight Jewish women who through their work have made contributions that “changed the world.”
This most recent honor appears in the Winter 2005 issue of Reform Judaism, a publication sent to more than 300,000 member households by the Union for Reform Judaism, an association in New York City serving Reform congregations throughout North America.
Recognition As a Woman Who Changed the World. The article singles out eight women, each selected for contributions in a different field. With her selection, Chicago is in the company of women such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first Jewish woman to be named to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and founding president of the National Organization for Women.
This honor further signifies the increasing recognition of Chicago’s importance as one of the foremost pioneers of feminist and post-modernist art. Chicago was selected for her courageous use of artistic media to fill in the gaps of historical narratives which prior to the 1970s had too often left out women’s voices and their contributions.
As noted in the article, Chicago opened the door for women to explore their experiences through the arts and thus inspired a wave of art focusing on issues of identity. She also challenged the distinction between “high art” and “popular art” by making use of such traditional “women’s crafts” as needlework in her Dinner Party installation of 1974-79 as well as in later works. These are aspects of post-modernism still relevant today.
The eight women featured in the article are among more than fifty profiled in “Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution,” a virtual exhibit launched in October 2005 as an online resource of the Jewish Women’s Archives (JWA), a national nonprofit organization based in Brookline, Massachusetts (www.jwa.org).
This is just the latest recognition among many Chicago has received in recent years. In 2002 The Dinner Party was acquired by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation for permanent installation in the new Sackler wing at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, opening in March 2007.
Also it was recently announced that Chicago will appear for the first time in Janson and Janson’s History of Art, the canonical and legendary survey text of art history, now at press in its seventh edition.
Upcoming Exhibitions. Chicago’s artistic efforts range over a wide variety of mediums and genres, which were selected by her for each project to fit her aesthetic intentions and her feeling that art should “change the world.” (See representative images from many of her projects enclosed with this release.)
Her most recent focus is glass; and, in this area, she is again stretching a medium’s boundaries in both content and technique.
“Chicago in Glass” will open at LewAllen Contemporary, one of the premier contemporary art galleries in Santa Fe, in October 2006. Information about this show will be forthcoming. It will include examples of new work as well as glass art from Chicago’s earlier projects, most notably Rainbow Shabbat (1992) her dazzling work in stained glass for The Holocaust Project.
Chicago’s work will also be included in a survey of Los Angeles art which opens in March 2006 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and a survey of Feminist Art opening early in 2007 at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. The latter exhibition then travels to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC.
Chicago’s preparatory work for The Dinner Party will be shown at LewAllen Contemporary after the 2007 opening of the installation’s permanent housing in the Brooklyn Museum. The gallery will also sponsor an adjunct symposium on the erasure of women’s cultural achievements from art historical records, the social and cultural context in which this erasure occurs and what Chicago has done to promote the preservation of women’s cultural legacy.
Contact: Diane Kell at (505) 988-8997 Mon-Fri 9:30-5:30, email: dkell@lewallencontemporary.com
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