UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The “Judy Chicago Research Portal: Learning, Making, Culture” was launched on Oct. 17, to highlight the impact of Chicago’s work and encompasses the more than 50 years of art, art education and feminism for which she is celebrated. The virtual portal links Judy Chicago collections housed at Penn State University Libraries; the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University; and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Chicago has placed her archives within three institutions, her website states, “as part of her efforts to overcome the erasure that has eclipsed the achievements of too many women.” The rare collaborative distribution includes her paper archives, located at the Schlesinger Library for the History of Women in America at Harvard; her art education archive and "the Dinner Party K-12 curriculum" at Penn State University Libraries; and her visual archives, housed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The portal aims to bring Chicago’s body of work to a global audience, for the potential of each repository to consider and embrace new audiences and their collective interested in Judy Chicago’s oeuvre and overall impact.
To coincide with the official launch, an event was hosted by Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study to introduce the Judy Chicago Research Portal. A panel discussion, including Penn State University Libraries Associate Dean for Technology and Digital Strategies Karen Estlund, discussed the portal’s developmental process, its role and the importance of preserving feminist archives. Other panelists included Andra Darlington, head of special collections management, Getty Research Institute; Margery Sly, director of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries; and moderator Christina Schlesinger, artist and activist. A conversation followed between Schlesinger and Judy Chicago about the importance of archiving women artists’ history and making it publicly available in order to ensure their legacy is not erased or forgotten.
A prolific feminist artist, author, and educator, Judy Chicago helped establish the Feminist Art Movement of the 1970s. Named as one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2018, her work addresses and celebrates the cultural accomplishments of women through a variety of media. She is known most notably for "The Dinner Party," a collaborative art consisting of 39 place settings that commemorates important historical and mythological female figures. Her most recent work, "The End: A Meditation on Death and Extinction," recently debuted at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and is on view through Jan. 20, 2020. This exhibition coincided with the release of a new monograph, "Judy Chicago: New Views," published by Scala and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The DeYoung museum in San Francisco also recently announced its plans to host a retrospective of Chicago’s work scheduled to open in May 2020. Judy Chicago is represented by Salon 94, New York and Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco.
The Judy Chicago Research Portal: Learning, Making, Culture can be accessed at https://judychicagoportal.org.