An on-line news service devoted to museums and exhibitions in New York City and vicinity. John Hammond, Editor Emeritus • Jonathan Slaff, Publisher • copyright © 2007
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
At the Brooklyn Museum
By Glenn Loney
The Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn
718-638-5000The Very Visual Centerpiece of this Gender-based Art-Gallery--funded by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation--is Judy Chicago's famous/infamous The Dinner Party. This immense artwork has, of course, been widely exhibited, especially when Feminist Issues were much in the foreground.
Your scribe must have seen it first at SFMoMA--or was it the California Palace of the Legion of Honor? It has been around.
It finally came to rest on Eastern Parkway, at the Brooklyn Museum, where it was exposed again several seasons ago--or so: I don't have the dates handy. Now it will have a Permanent Home in the new Sackler Center.
For those who have never seen these Unusual-Vaginal Table-Settings, Chicago devised a huge three-sided table, open in the center. The effect is either Triangular or Pyramidal, depending on your point of view.
Along the three sides are elaborate Place-mats, Goblets, & Plates, consecrated to the Image & Memory of a series of Famous Women of History. The plates are the most important of the Tout Ensemble. Each symbolically & vaginally suggests the Life & Achievements of the Woman at that particular Metaphoric Seat--there are no Pelvic-Girdle Chairs.
Some of these are striking; all are colorful & imaginative; a few are remarkably insightful & incisive. Chicago's visual equivalents of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues go far beyond Georgia O'Keeffe's suggestive paintings.
Also on Offer will be Global Feminisms and Pharaohs. Queens, & Goddesses. Having just returned from extensive photography of the desert Temple-Complex of Pharaoh/Queen Hatshepsut, for my website, INFOTOGRAPHY™, I look forward to this show. It will be drawn from the Museum's own extensive collections from Ancient Egypt & the Classical World.
