2019.03 Dinner Party

Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is a widely celebrated artwork housed at the Brooklyn Museum in the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The piece consists of a large banquet arranged in the shape of an open triangle. Thirty-nine individualized place settings and sculpted plates are set for ‘guests of honor’ and a further 999 names are inscribed in gold on the surrounding porcelain tiles. Among those invited to the table are ancient Greek poet Sappho, Queen Elizabeth I, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony and Georgia O’Keeffe.

While Judy Chicago’s piece focuses on celebrating the role of women in Western civilization and uses a language of vaginal imagery to do so, we invite you to interpret and challenge this to bring about an inclusive dinner party and resulting archive. Moreover, the piece has been criticized for its essentialism, as such we challenge you to define who your dinner guest is by applying your own values and definition of who a designer is.