Washington, D.C. - Judy Chicago, one of America’s artistic trailblazers and a pioneer of the feminist art movement, will be the subject of an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) from October 11, 2002 to January 5, 2003. The exhibition will feature over 90 works from the 1960s to the present, and will include selections from Chicago’s best-known work as well as rarely seen early and recent autobiographical pieces.

Chicago’s monumental installation The Dinner Party (1979), a symbolic history of women in Western civilization in visual and textual form, has become an icon of the 20^th century. Her two autobiographies, Through the Flower and Beyond the Flower, have been sold around the world. The NMWA exhibition will provide an overview of the artist’s career in the following sections: Early California Years, 1964-71; Breakthrough Years, 1972-75; The Dinner Party, 1974-79; Birth Project, 1980-85; Powerplay, 1983-86; Holocaust Project, 1985-93; and The End of the Century, 1993-2000.

At a time when women artists had very few role models and even fewer opportunities for recognition and success, Chicago looked to her female forebears for inspiration and began to explore identity and other issues from a woman’s perspective. She established the first feminist art program in 1970 at Fresno State College in California. In 1972 she collaborated with Miriam Schapiro under the sponsorship of Cal Arts on the groundbreaking art/performance space Womanhouse, continuing to generate a great deal of debate with her art and activist stance. Chicago’s art also underwent a transformation at this time as her early paintings and sculptures gave way in the late 1960s to large spray-painted canvases of centered geometric forms —works celebrating women’s spirit, power, and generative strength.

With The Dinner Party, Chicago distinguished herself further as an artist determined to change the way women, and women artists in particular, are remembered and regarded. Going against traditional societal taboos in choosing the vulva as her main symbolic image, Chicago also rejected art hierarchies by working with craft as well as fine arts, and foregrounded the idea of artistic collaboration rather than lone artistic genius. The Dinner Party solidified Chicago’s place as a feminist and has become an icon of feminist art.

Her next large work, Birth Project, celebrates women’s role as the giver of life, with 150 needleworkers showcasing once again Chicago’s collaborative interests. The Powerplay series explores the distortion that power has when it dominates men's lives and its wrenching emotional effects on both sexes. In the Holocaust Project, Chicago worked with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, to use the Holocaust as a point of departure in addressing the suffering of all victims of genocide. Autobiographical and recent work reveals the emotions of the artist at different points in her career, and includes her recent Song of Songs (1998).

Admission to the exhibition is $8 for adults, $6 for students and people age 60 and over, and free for NMWA members and youth 18 and under. Free Community Days are the first Sunday and Wednesday of each month.

Judy Chicago is presented at NMWA through the generous sponsorship of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. The foundation seeks to raise awareness of the contributions of women in all areas of art and culture with specific focus on feminist art. According to Elizabeth A. Sackler, "This exhibition is a glimpse of the breadth and range of Judy Chicago’s oeuvre, her groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and to women. She has fought the status quo with the same single-minded tenacity, resilience, and gumption with which she has conducted her life and forged her life’s work."

The exhibition’s consulting curators are John Bullard, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art, and Viki Wylder, curator of education at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. Liaison curator is NMWA Chief Curator Susan Fisher Sterling. An accompanying book, Judy Chicago, with more than 100 full-color illustrations will be available in NMWA’s museum shop. Spanning four decades of Chicago’s work, the book features an interview with the artist by renowned feminist art critic and historian Lucy R. Lippard and biographical text by Wylder.

Coinciding with NMWA’s exhibition, Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party will be exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art from September 20, 2002 through February 9, 2003. This gift to the Brooklyn Museum of Art from The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation will be permanently installed in 2004.

Programs planned in conjunction with the exhibition include a conversation on October 11 with Judy Chicago and esteemed art critic Arthur Danto, exploring themes in her artwork. A documentary film on the making of Chicago’s The Dinner Party will be screened on October 23, and a symposium on the significance of Chicago’s work, featuring leading feminist art historians and cultural critics, will take place on November 15 at the University of Maryland. Additional program support is provided by Mary Ross Taylor and Virginia B. Galtney, Martha Smiley, Jane Hickie, and NMWA’s North Carolina State Committee. Please call NMWA’s Education Department at 202.783.7370 for information and reservations.

The National Museum of Women in the Arts, founded in 1981 and opened in 1987, is the only museum dedicated solely to celebrating the achievements of women in the visual, performing, and literary arts. Its permanent collection contains works by more than 800 artists, including Judith Leyster, Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Cassatt, Camille Claudel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Elizabeth Catlett, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, and Louise Bourgeois. The museum also conducts multidisciplinary programs for diverse audiences, maintains a Library and Research Center, publishes a quarterly magazine, and has organized 27 state committees. Nearly 120,000 people visit the museum each year, including thousands of young people who come with schools and scouting groups. NMWA’s national membership of more than 35,000 is among the top ten percent of museum memberships nationwide. The museum is located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC, in a landmark building near the White House. It is open Monday-Saturday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday noon - 5 p.m. For information call 202.783.5000 or visit the museum’s website, www.nmwa.org.