3. We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85 and The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum

“We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85” at the Brooklyn Museum. 

We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85, on display at the Brooklyn Museum, features the works of more than forty artists reacting to a time of social unrest. From Black Power and Civil Rights movements in the 1960s to the second-wave Feminist Movement in the 1970s, these experimental and traditional pieces worked to combat oppression faced by these women both in the world of art and society at large. The exhibit was curated by Catherine Morris and Rujeko Hockley and continues through September 17.

Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”, 1979, on display at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. 

Also permanently on display at the Brooklyn Museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. The triangular table, forty-eight feet on each side, is home to a banquet celebrating 1,038 female figures–both real and mythical–many of whom had been forgotten from history. The Dinner Party, which took Chicago five years to complete, features 39 personalized place settings and embroidered runners, along with 999 names inscribed on the floor. Roots of “The Dinner Party”: History in the Making, an exhibition which gives a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of The Dinner Party, opens on October 20.