Tiffany Shlain
Multidisciplinary artist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, national bestselling author, and founder of the Webby Awards whose work explores technology, culture, feminism, and human connection.
Judy Chicago Turned Women’s Art Into a Public Monument
Tiffany Shlain calls Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party the first artwork every American should see, arguing that its monumental scale reclaims women’s place in history through forms long dismissed as “women’s art.” For Shlain, Chicago’s triangular installation turns craft, decoration and repeated place settings into a public feminist monument. Its broad historical reach, she says, is inseparable from the situated perspective of a Jewish feminist American artist.
The Dinner Party Recasts Women’s Art as Monumental History
Artist and filmmaker Tiffany Shlain argues that Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party is an essential American artwork because it makes women’s histories visible at monumental scale. In her reflection for the Aspen Institute Arts Program’s Art of America series, Shlain presents the installation as a feminist reclamation that uses forms long associated with women’s art to assert that women helped create the country’s history.