Judy Chicago
Judy Chicago (b. 1939, Chicago, USA; lives and works in New Mexico, USA) is an artist, author, feminist, cultural historian, and educator. Named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in 2018, she has garnered an enduring stature. Born Judy Cohen, and known briefly after her first marriage as Judy Gerowitz, Chicago attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1970, the artist adopted the surname ‘Chicago’ and initiated the United States’ first Feminist Art Programme at California State University, Fresno.
Her work has been the subject of major retrospectives. Most recently the New Museum, New York City, NY (2023); the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (2018); Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY (2018); and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2017). Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, NY; British Museum, London; de Young Museum, CA; Getty Trust, CA; Hammer Museum, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; SFMOMA, CA; Tate, London; and more than twenty-five university art museums. She is the author of numerous books including The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago (Thames & Hudson: 2021); Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education (The Monacelli Press: 2014); The Birth Project (Doubleday: 1985); Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1979); The Dinner Party: A Symbol of our Heritage (Anchor Press/Doubleday: 1979); and Beyond the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (Doubleday: 1975); among others.
Judy Chicago gained prominence in the late 1960s for making work from a woman-centered perspective, which challenged the male-dominated landscape of the art world. An artistic polymath, Chicago’s work is characterised by a commitment to craft and experimentation, evident in her subject matter, methodology and choice of materials.
Throughout her six-decade career, Chicago has contested the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon, developing a distinctive visual language that gives visibility to their experiences. Her individual and collaborative projects address themes of birth; masculinity; Jewish identity; notions of power; extinction; and a longstanding concern for climate justice.
