Judy Chicago's Pussies
Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
September 8 - October 29, 2017

This solo exhibition features work by
Judy Chicago ranging from 1964 to 2004. Chicago's work has long been associated with images of pussy power as a visual metaphor for female agency, even before the term was widely accep t ed. What is less well known are her images of cats. The exhibition is the first to trace the long and
fascinating overlap between her broad-ranging, beautiful "central core" imagery and her eccentric feline iconography.
In conjunction with the exhibition, on September 10, 2017 Judy Chicago will participate in a public talk at JCC San Francisco with the writer Sarah Thornton. The speaking
event, titled Pussy Power, will focus on
the themes of the exhibition.

Inside The Dinner Party Studio
Curated by Sarah Osborne Bender
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
September 17, 2017 - January 5, 2018

The National Museum of Women in the Arts will host an exhibition that explores the inner-workings of The Dinner Party studio. Over the course of nearly five years and with the help of hundreds of volunteers, Judy Chicago executed one of the most important artworks of the 20th century, confronting the erasure of women from history using elaborate research, craft, and presentation. For the exhibition, titled Inside The Dinner Party Studio, NMWA has collected archival materials, including test objects, designs, documentation, and revealing behind-the-scenes footage shot by filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas, to illustrate the complexity of this monumental artwork. In conjunction with the exhibition's opening, the museum will present a Fresh Talk program at 4:30 pm on September 17, 2017, which will feature Judy Chicago in conversation with Alison Gass, Director of the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago. Reservations are required to attend.

Roots of "The Dinner Party": History in the Making
Curated by Carmen Hermo
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
October 20, 2017 - March 4, 2018

Roots of "The Dinner Party": History in the Making is the first museum exhibition to examine the formal, material, and conceptual development of Judy Chicago's iconic work, The Dinner Party (1974-79). The exhibition presents never-before-seen objects that illuminate the installation's development as a multilayered artwork, a triumph of collaborative art-making, and a testament to the power of revising Western history to include women. Presented in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, alongside The Dinner Party, the exhibition features more than 100 objects, including rarely seen test plates, research documents, ephemera, notebooks, and preparatory drawings from 1971 through 1979. The exhibition is presented chronologically, with sections introducing Chicago's vision for The Dinner Party and her material study of china-painting and needlework ---      including focused case studies of the Mary W ollstonecraft and Sojourner Truth place settings. It continues with research documents and ephemera from Chicago's studio, highlighting the intensive research that underpins the piece and providing insights into Chicago's creative process.


 


As part of the preparations for the "Roots" exhibition, the Brooklyn Museum is planning some improvements to the lighting system. We at Through the Flower are trying to coordinate with them by asking our friends to help support the museum's efforts. Judy Chicago wants
The Dinner Party to look its best at this wonderful celebration of ten years of educating, empowering and inspiring the many viewers who have traveled to see the piece and those who will come to see the show.

Help us reach our goal of $25,000 to preserve the "girls" in the best possible light for the future. Your tax-deductible contribution will be memorialized in a special section of Through the Flower's website. Suggested minimum contribution of $250 by
individuals or groups.

If you have any questions or would prefer to make your donation by check please
contact Through the Flower at 505-864-4080 or info@throughtheflower.org.


Womenhouse
La Monnaie de Paris, Paris, France
October 20, 2017 - January 28, 2018

This exhibition, created in partnership with the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) in Washington DC, features more than 30 global artists who conceive of home as a place for demonstration and liberation rather than a space solely for nurturing comfort and stability. The Womenhouse exhibition forms a sequel to the famous project Womanhouse , developed in 1972 by Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro and their students at Cal Arts. Like their famous foremothers in the 1970's, contemporary artists in this exhibition recast conventional ideas about women and the home with acuity and wit, through provocative photographs, videos, sculptures, and room-like installations built with materials ranging from felt to rubber bands. Organized across six themes--- from "Desperate Housewife" to "Nomads" --- Womenhouse emphasizes the plurality of contemporary women artists' views on the home. Following its run in France, the exhibition will be on view at NMWA from March 9 - May 28, 2018 and will be accompanied by a catalog featuring contributions by Judy Chicago and NMWA's Director, Susan Fisher Sterling.

Be No More
Four Lads from Liverpool


On April 26, 2017 Judy Chicago completed
Be No More; her fourth dry ice installation
at the San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art (SFMOMA). More than twenty tons of
dry ice blocks spelled out the word
"TRUTH" which was then illuminated by
over 300 road flares that were ignited in
two separate events. Volunteers from as
far away as Washington and Ohio states worked with Judy and her team to create
this momentous work. The work was met
with great interest from both passersby
and guests of the museum's "Birthday
Bash," the anniversary event for which
the piece had been commissioned. The billowing pink fog that filled the museum's corridor made a dramatic and powerful statement about the disappearance of
any agreed-upon truths.


After months of planning and ten long
days on site at Stanley Dock in Liverpool, Judy Chicago's 42 feet high, 60 feet wide mural, titled Four Lads from Liverpool, was completed on June 3, 2017. The mural was commissioned by Tate Liverpool as part of the city's multi-site celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As a prompt for the mural's subject, Chicago was assigned the album track, "Fixing a Hole" ---      a starting point that at first seemed a bit challenging. After researching the various interpretations of the song's lyrics, she found a connection through Paul McCartney's account of the track's meaning ---      a defiant reaction to being told how to live one's life. Chicago interpreted McCartney's words to being about "being discounted and wanting to give a voice ---    'fixing a hole' of who counted." Under Chicago's guidance, local painter Gary Jones spent a month preparing and painting the design which features the four members of the Beatles peering into a gap in the building's structure, surrounded by the vibrant rainbow colors which have become one of Judy Chicago's hallmarks. The mural proved so popular that Tate Enterprises decided to produce a limited edition print of the mural's design. A short video of Judy speaking in front of the mural may be seen on Tate Liverpool's Website.


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