Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is located on the fourth floor of the Brooklyn Museum, New York City, United States. Since 2007 it has been the home of Judy Chicago's 1979 installation, The Dinner Party. The Center's namesake and founder, Elizabeth A. Sackler, is a philanthropist, art collector, and member of the Sackler family.
History[edit]
The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened on March 23, 2007, at the Brooklyn Museum as the first public space of its kind in the country. The 8,300-square-foot (770 m2) center, located on the museum's fourth floor, aims to create a compelling and interactive environment to raise awareness and educate about feminism's impact on culture.
Since 2007 the Center has been the permanent home of Judy Chicago's landmark feminist work The Dinner Party.[1][2]
The Center's Forum is a venue for public programs and a platform of advocacy for women's issues, and its Feminist Art and Herstory galleries present various exhibitions. The Council for Feminist Art, a membership group, supports the ongoing educational programming and the continuing success of the Center.
Layout[edit]
The Dinner Party's gallery is the centerpiece of the Center that was conceived and developed by architect Susan T. Rodriguez, a partner in Ennead Architects. The Dinner Party, which includes 39 place settings as well as the names of 998 women on a Heritage Floor, is enclosed in large, canting glass walls that provide a first glimpse of Chicago's work. It is surrounded by a series of galleries that include two changing exhibition galleries and a study center that can be transformed from an academic forum into a multimedia gallery, as required, by a large pivoting wall.[3]
The Center's opening exhibition, "Global Feminisms"[4] was the first international exhibit exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. It was curated by Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin.
Feminist Art Base[edit]
An original initiative from the Center for Feminist Art is its "Feminist Art Base, conceptualized by the Center's founding curator, Maura Reilly."[7] This database is a self-generated selection of past and present artists, whose work reflect feminist ideas, investments, and concerns, such as Karen Heagle, Julia Kunin and Clarity Haynes. The database is actively added to with artists from the around the world, who continue to build their profiles. Each profile includes short biographies, CVs, and exemplary works as well as a "Feminist Art Statement".[7]
In March 2012, the Center celebrated its fifth anniversary by honoring fifteen contemporary women with the Sackler Center First Awards. The awards, conceived by Sackler, are given each year to women who have broken a gender barrier to make a remarkable achievement and contribution in her respective field. The honorees are:[8]
2016:
2015:
2014:
2013:
2012: