Judy Chicago: Illustrated Timeline

Judy Chicago's Finger Painting, 1943

1945 Started attending art classes at the Chicago Art Institute.

1957 Moved to Los Angeles to attend University of California, Los Angeles.

1962 Graduated with BA from UCLA Phi Beta Kappa, one of the few art students to be so honored.

Bigamy, 1963

1964 Received MA from UCLA in painting and sculpture.

Rainbow Pickett, 1965/2004

1965 New Year’s Eve: First solo show at Rolf Nelson Gallery, Los Angeles. Subsequently shown in the first major Minimalist show at the Jewish Museum, curated by Kynaston McShine. Chicago was one of only four women in the exhibition. In 2004, Rainbow Pickett (which was destroyed by the artist) was reconstructed for LAMOCA’s minimalist show, “A Minimalist Future” and became the hallmark image for the exhibition.

Cuntleader, 1970-71, students of the Feminist art program.

1970 Set out to construct a Feminist art practice and Pioneered first Feminist art program at California State University, Fresno, a year long program from Fall 1970 to Spring, 1971.

Boxing Ring Ad, Announcement in Artforum for Jack Glenn Gallery, 1971. Photo by Jerry McMillan

1970 Legally changed name to Judy Chicago in an effort to liberate herself from male-dominated stereotypes.

1971 Quote from Judy Chicago’s Journal: “I am beginning this journal now, because the work with which I am involved has developed faster than I had ever imagined...and before the moment is gone and forgotten, I want to (document)...the growth of the first Feminist art ever attempted.”

Linen Closet by Sandy Orgel, a student of Feminist Art, Project from Womanhouse, 1972

1972 Womanhouse, created in Los Angeles by Chicago and Schapiro with the students of the Feminist Art Program, the first female-centered art installation. The exhibition was an instant sensation and its reverberations continue today.

Women’s Building photo from Brochure, 1972, designed by Sheila de Bretteville.

1973 Opening of the Women’s Building - founded by Chicago with the late art historian Arlene Raven and designer, Sheila de Bretteville (now the dean of Design at Yale University) - based upon the 1893 building of the same name at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. Like its predecessor, it was run by a Board of Lady Managers. The building housed a number of feminist organizations, businesses and art galleries including the Feminist Studio Workshop (established by Chicago, Raven and de Bretteville), the first independent feminist art school. Over the twenty years of its existence, the Women’s Building produced many important women artists.

Judy Chicago at work on Dinner Party alone in her china painting studio.

1974 Chicago began work on what would become her best known work, The Dinner Party, a monumental tribute to women’s achievements that would occupy her for over five years.

Through the Flower, Chinese, 1997

1975 Publication of Chicago’s first book, Through the Flower, which chronicled her struggles to find her own identity as a woman artist, with an Introduction by Anais Nin. Subsequently published in Japan, England, Germany, and China, thereby bringing Chicago’s art and ideas to an international audience.

Through the Flower offices and exhibition space in Benicia, CA, 1983

1978 Through the Flower, a 501-c3 non-profit corporation was chartered to help facilitate the completion of The Dinner Party. The Dinner Party overview Long line to view The Dinner Party at San Francisco Museum of Art, 1979. The Dinner Party permanent housing poster, 1979. 1979: Premiere of The Dinner Party at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art where it was seen by 100,000 people and written about in almost every major mainstream publication including such national magazines as Newsweek, Life, People. Despite this major success, the scheduled exhibition tour of The Dinner Party collapsed and Through the Flower took on the organization of the tour, which was propelled by grass-roots groups that organized around the U.S., Canada, then Europe and Australia. Eventually, over one million people viewed the exhibit. At this same time, Chicago set a goal for permanently housing The Dinner Party.

The Dinner Party overview

1979 Premiere of The Dinner Party at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art where it was seen by 100,000 people and written about in almost every major mainstream publication including such national magazines as Newsweek, Life, People. Despite this major success, the scheduled exhibition tour of The Dinner Party collapsed and Through the Flower took on the organization of the tour, which was propelled by grass-roots groups that organized around the U.S., Canada, then Europe and Australia. Eventually, over one million people viewed the exhibit. At this same time, Chicago set a goal for permanently housing The Dinner Party.

Judy Chicago working with L.A. Hassing from Birth Project , 1981. Photo by Michele Maier

1980 Birth Project: Fueled by the intense interest in her work that was produced by the publication of her autobiography and then, the exhibition of The Dinner Party, Chicago received hundreds of requests from people interested in working with her. From this pool, the 150 Birth Project needleworkers were selected. This project was sponsored and later, toured by Through the Flower to over 100 venues to a viewing audience of more than 250,000 people. Later, Birth Project art was gifted by Through the Flower to museums, university galleries, birthing centers and hospitals as part of Through the Flower’s mission of introducing Feminist art into the culture.

Driving the World to Destruction from Powerplay, 1988

1982 Powerplay, an examination of the construct of a masculinity in drawings, paintings, sculptures, weavings, cast paper and bronze.

Dr. Helen Courvoisie needleworker for Pregnant Amazon birth garment, 1983.

1985 Publication of Birth Project book simultaneous with exhibitions around the country.

Judy Chicago & Donald Woodman

1985 New Year’s Eve: Marriage to photographer Donald Woodman.

Judy Chicago in Prague cemetery during reseach/travel for Holocaust Project

1985 Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light, an eight-year collaborative project created by Judy Chicago and Donald Woodman along with selected artisans, is a journey into the darkness of the Holocaust which resulted in an exhibition that combined painting and photography to explore the meaning of the Holocaust in a contemporary context. Introduced by a monumental tapestry suggesting that the Holocaust grew out of the ‘fabric’ of Western Civilization and concludes with a large stained glass installation, Rainbow Shabbat: A Vision for the Future.

Workshop at College of Santa Fe, NM

1990 Through the Flower moved to New Mexico and began presenting public seminars and art workshops.

Book Cover, Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light

1993 Publication of Holocaust Project book.

Installation view featuring Arbeit Macht - Frei: Work Makes Who Free?

1993 Exhibition tours of Holocaust Project with continuing exhibitions of Selections from the Holocaust Project, toured by Through the Flower.

Installation view Find It In Your Heart from Resolutions: A Stitch in Time

1994 Resolutions: A Stitch in Time: Working with a select group of needleworkers, Chicago set out to create a series of painted and needleworked images re-interpreting traditional proverbs for a multi-cultural future. Described by renowned British art writer Edward Lucie-Smith in his 1999 monograph, Judy Chicago: An American Vision, as a “post-modern project that subverts the traditions of both needlework and proverbs.” This exhibition was curated by David Revere McFadden, senior curator at the Museum of Art and Design in NY, where it premiered in 2000, subsequently traveling to museums in the U.S. and Canada.

Belen Hotel, Belen, NM

1996 Chicago and Woodman moved into Belen Hotel, Belen, NM, an historic railroad hotel on the National Register of Historic Places, after a three-year renovation/restoration by Woodman. This is the first home of their own, either of them has ever had.

Book Cover, Sexual Politics

1996 “Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History” opened at UCLA Armand Hammer Museum and Cultural Center in Los Angeles. This exhibition, curated by Dr. Amelia Jones, examined the international impact of The Dinner Party and contextualized the piece in 20 years of Feminist art by 55 artists with an accompanying catalog edited by Jones with essays by a selection of writers and theorists, published by University of California Press. At this same time, Through the Flower initiated an Endowment campaign to ensure an in-perpetuity existence for the Corporation.

Book Cover, The Dinner Party

1996 The Dinner Party, the third book about the work by Chicago.

Book Cover, Beyond the Flower

1996 Beyond the Flower: The Autobiography of a Feminist Artist Publication of 2nd volume of Chicago’s autobiography.

No Compromise film based on Indiana University, Bloomington Project

1999 Chicago returned to teaching, doing semester long project classes (culminating in exhibitions) at institutions around the country, including: Indiana University, Bloomington, IN; Duke University, Durham, NC; Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY; Cal-Poly, Pomona, CA; and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Several films were made about her unique teaching methods which had their roots in the Feminist art programs of the 1970's. In 2001, she began team-teaching with Donald Woodman, which allowed her to extend her feminist-based pedagogy to include men. Quotes from participants of Evoke, Invoke, Provoke Project at Vanderbilt University: Michelle Davis: “it has been my desire since the day you left Nashville to tell you how much your program...has meant to me...I feel that I walked away with so much more than I came with because of you.” Clay Caroll:“Your knowledge and guidance really allowed me to develop my thoughts on art and push my artmaking to a new level. For this I will always be thankful.”

Installation view, Overview exhibition, National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2002.

1999 “Trials and Tributes”: A Works on Paper retrospective surveying Chicago’s prodigious production on paper organized by Dr. Viki Thompson Wylder, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL with an accompanying catalog. Toured to nine venues around the U.S. culminating in an expanded exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2001 and then, in 2002, an overview exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC with a catalog edited by Dr. Elizabeth A. Sackler.

The Dinner Party on its way to the Brooklyn Museum

2002 The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation acquired and gifted The Dinner Party to the Brooklyn Museum with the intention of permanently housing it in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first such institution in the world. At this same time, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited The Dinner Party for a second time (a prior exhibition was held in 1980) but this time, the critical climate had dramatically changed. Instead of the hostile and vitriolic reception originally accorded The Dinner Party by the mainstream critics, it was hailed by Roberta Smith in the New York Times who described the piece as “...almost as much a part of American culture as Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, the WPA murals and the AIDS quilts.” and “...as getting better all the time.

New Mexico: Women Cultural Corridor Map

2003 With the impending permanent housing of The Dinner Party, Through the Flower began strategic planning for its future as an in-perpetuity art archive and studio/home museum to make Judy Chicago’s legacy as an artist, author and educator available to future generations.

Book cover, Kitty City

2005 Chicago premieres KittyCity: A Feline Book of Hours, a series of watercolors that were also collected in a lavishly illustrated book based upon a traditional Book of Hours but in this instance, chronicling a day in the life of the Chicago/Woodman’s household, which is home to six cats. In conjunction with the publication of the book and exhibitions around the country, Chicago worked with animal rescue agencies around the country to do cat adoptions.

Through the Flower office, Belen, NM

2005 Through the Flower bought a small building in Belen across the street from the Belen Hotel and began a series of Art Conversations to bring art discourse to their small, semi-rural community. Through the Flower also initiated the New Mexico Women’s Cultural Corridor, highlighting sites throughout the state devoted to women’s achievements.

Excerpt from Janson & Janson A Basic History of Western Art, 7th ed. Saddle River NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006, pp. 621-622.

2006 The Dinner Party is featured in Janson and Janson’s A Basic History of Western Art in a full page feature that concludes: “This exquisite setting for a spiritual last supper...stands as a powerful icon for women’s liberation and independence. Additionally, its gender politics, commentary on contemporary society, and use of so many different styles and periods announces the art of the 1980's, an art that still prevails today and has come to be called Post-Modernism.”

Chicago in Glass neon sign

2006 Chicago in Glass opens at LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe, a survey of Chicago’s recent work in glass including stained glass, fused, cast, etched and painted glass in both two and three-dimensions, Chicago explores another new media, again transforming a challenging technique into a vehicle for personal expression.

Book cover, The Dinner Party

2007 Publication by Merrell Publishers of Judy Chicago’s final and definitive book about The Dinner Party for which Chicago re-researched the 1038 women on the table and the porcelain Heritage Floor, the first real art book about this icon of twentieth-century art.

Childbirth in America exhibition at Through the Flower, 2006

2008 Through the Flower will make available a Dinner Party curriculum aimed at middle and secondary school teachers, being created by Chicago in collaboration with Through the Flower board member, Dr. Constance Gee, a well-known art educator, who has brought together a select group of curriculum writers. Future plans include expansion of Through the Flower’s Belen, NM facilities and the offering of a summer workshop program to train art teachers in The Dinner Party curriculum and also, to provide training to university studio art and art history professors in Chicago’s content-based art pedagogy.