the Dinner Party

Female Inmates Recreate Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party

| Betsy
Shared Dining, York 2015. Photo from the article by Susan Meiselas.
Shared Dining, York 2015. Photo from the article by Susan Meiselas.

Sometimes a story comes along and is just so brilliant and amazing that you can’t help but share. This is one of them.

Here’s the first part of the piece, please click either the photo or the linked text for more.

Two years ago, public historian and activist Elizabeth Sackler visited a high-security all-female prison in York, Conn. While there, she conducted a workshop devoted to Judy Chicago’s seminal feminist artwork, “The Dinner Party,” a banquet table with 39 place settings each dedicated to an important woman in history. But, after crafting their own plates using paper products and paint, one of the inmates had a more ambitious idea.

“She said, ‘Why don’t we make a whole table like Judy Chicago’s?’” recalls Sackler. “And the artwork they ended up creating was so wonderful, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fabulous to see it actually next to ‘The Dinner Party’?

”Now you can. “Shared Dining” — created over six months in 2013 by 10 women at the York Correctional Institution — is finally having its New York debut at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Gallery, where it will be on view alongside Chicago’s 1970s icon through September 13.

Check out these links for more info:
Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Gallery
Components of The Dinner Party
The Dinner Party Gallery from judychicago.com