The Dinner Party: From Creation to Preservation

Judy Chicagos masterpiece The Dinner Party is a monumental work of art conceived as a symbolic history of women in Western civilization. Strategically countering the traditional erasure of womens achievements, this epic installation honours 1038 iconic, mythical, archetypal and historical women. This, the most definitive book to be published on Chicagos masterwork, reveals more fully than ever before the art and the artists expanded research into the rich history embodied in the installation. In lively contextualizing sections, Chicago discusses the creative genesis of The Dinner Party, the technical processes involved, and the works early often hostile reception by the art world, and its subsequent preservation and permanent exhibition.