The Dinner Party is a work of second-wave feminist art made up of a collection of thirty-nine unique place settings that each honor a historical or mythological woman. Judy Chicago spearheaded it’s creation and assemblage from 1971 to 1979 and the collection was displayed for the first time in San Francisco, 1979. This was an important first step for feminist art to become more mainstream.The primary pieces in the collection are the thirty-nine plates for each highlighted woman. The plates largely follow a ‘vulvar motif’ and are arrayed in a triangular pattern with each side of the triangle representing a different era of the history of Western women. The complexity and verticality of each plate represents the amount of liberation said woman experienced in her day. Beneath the table and the plate settings lies the Heritage Floor which contains the names of nine-hundred-ninety-nine additional women who were selected to in relation to the main thirty-nine. The addition of the is meant to convey “how many women had struggled into prominence or been able to make their ideas known— sometimes in the face of overwhelming obstacles—only (like the women on the table) to have their hard-earned achievements marginalized or erased,” (Chicago). The overall mission of the collection is to bring attention to the generally overlooked contributions of women by highlighting historical ‘heroines’ that are less known than their male counterparts and, in doing so, start to create a parallel narrative to our typically androcentric Western history.

Despite Judy Chicago’s post-feminist approach to artwork, we found that some aspects of her artwork could be interpreted differently. While the vulvar motif throughout her dinner plates depict variations on the concept of ‘woman’, the message is ultimately relying on bio-essentialist ideological perspective on women as a whole. On the other hand, it is true that the women that she incorporated at the Dinner Party were all cis women. Although you can hardly blame Chicago for not including any non-cis women in the collection, given that it was made in the late 70s, we think the collection can ultimately improve. We’d like to imagine that if this project were to be continued, that more dinner plates would be made, there would be a more inclusive sentiment that does not rely on body parts, and considers the trans women who have contributed to the feminist scene and to the world. It would be fantastic to have a Marsha P. Johnson dinner plate, and interesting to hypothesize it might look like, considering her role in LGBTQ+ politics. While Chicago’s intentions for the collection were empowering, significant improvements could be made to this collection to make it more inclusive. One of the glaring controversies surrounding this collection is that Sojourner Truth is the only black woman represented in the collection.We would encourage those who visit the collection to also check out the The Roots of The Dinner Party which contains Judy Chicago’s research documents, test plates and her notes on the evolution of the project as a piece of collaborative feminist art and historical revisionism. We would also implore those viewing or visiting the collection to consider these questions: how plates are arranged in your own live and residence. Are there plates in your home because they “feel” like your plate? How does Chicago challenge the traditional perspective of women by reclaiming the dinner table/placement as a form of adornment and recognition? What role do you think historical revisionism should play in our society going forward, do you think it’s important and/or can it go too far? What significance does a collection like this have in the 21st Century, regarding feminism and how our society views women?

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