For the first time, young feminists saw the scale of their buried history. Elderly women wept at the setting for Sacajawea. Lesbian activists held quiet vigils at the setting for Sappho. And the museum installed "quiet rooms" where visitors could process their emotional reactions—a first for a contemporary art show.
When art history textbooks discuss the watershed moments of late 20th-century feminist art, one date stands as a peculiar crossroads: 1994 . For the uninitiated, the keyword "The Dinner Party -1994-" often sparks a chronological confusion. Wasn’t Judy Chicago’s iconic installation The Dinner Party finished in 1979? Why does 1994 matter? The Dinner Party -1994-
The $1.6 million purchase was brokered by a coalition of feminist philanthropists and the ARCO Foundation. Why 1994? Because it represented a generational changing of the guard. The male-dominated museum boards of the 70s and 80s were finally being infiltrated by women who had come of age during the women’s liberation movement. For the first time, young feminists saw the