Lectures

In addition to the lectures listed, Judy Chicago also presents lectures that are tailored to the needs of particular audiences. In addition, she also invites institutions to organize “Conversations” between her and public figures selected by the institution which can include visuals of her work to supplement the discussion. All lectures include a 20 minute question and answer period with the audience. For more information, please contact info@judychicago.com.

Lecture Topics

1. An Evening with Judy Chicago

The artist discusses her long career and shows highlights of work from different projects, series and periods, culminating in a discussion about her most recent work in glass. (PowerPoint presentation)

2. Feminist Art in the 21st Century: Content/Context/ Continuity

A review of the development and continued vitality of the Feminist art movement in which Chicago played a pivotal role. Available as both a PowerPoint and slide lecture. (PowerPoint presentation)

3. Women and Art

Based upon the book, Women and Art: Contested Territory (1999, Watson-Guptill), co-written with British art writer, Edward Lucie-Smith, Chicago compares images of women in Western art by both male and female artists, putting forth the contention that recent art history might be said to emobdy an ever-intensifying struggle over the representation of the female body. (Slide lecture)

4. Thread is Like a Brushstroke

A survey of Chicago’s work in the needle and textile arts was the subject of a major exhibition at the Canadian Textile Museum in February, 2009, it then traveled to the Calgary Art Gallery in the Fall of that same year. This lecture focuses on the artist’s approach to transforming needlework into a fine arts form through her work in The Dinner Party (1974-1979); the Birth Project (1980-85); and Resolutions: A Stitch in Time (1994 -2000). (Slide lecture)

5. Representation and the Holocaust: From 1985 – 1993

Chicago collaborated with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, on a traveling exhibition about the Holocaust, the Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light. During the course of their research and artmaking, they encountered the idea that art on the subject of the Holocaust is impossible. At the same time, there is an ever-expanding quantity of art on this subject which raises the question: by what standards should art on the subject of the Holocaust be measured?. (Slide lecture)

6. Woman/Artist/Jew

Chicago discusses the ways in which being raised in a secular Jewish household inflected with Jewish values has affected her work as an artist, focusing on her efforts to explore her Jewish identity in a variety of artworks. (Slide lecture)

7. Reflections on The Dinner Party

Chicago looks back on her best known work, a monumental tribute to women’s achievements in Western Civilization now permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum, discussing its ongoing relevance at a time when the gains of the second wave of the women’s movement are in danger of being lost. (Slide lecture)

8. Rethinking Curriculum in Art

For the last few years, Judy Chicago has been involved in the development of a K-12 Dinner Party curriculum. In this lecture, she discusses the crucial importance of transforming curriculum so that it includes rather than excludes women. (PowerPoint presentation)