Report from Santa Fe; Judy Chicago

Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to Report from Santa Fe. Today we have an extraordinary artist, Judy Chicago is joining us. Thank you. Thank you, Lorraine. Well, this is a special day because the day we're taping is the day that you will receive the 2011 Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts. So, especially I'm happy to have you here today. Thank you. I want our audience to see some of your work. This one you did in what, 70? Five, I wrote through the flower. My first book was published in 1975. And since

then it's been published all over the world, even in China. Tell us a subtitle. My struggle is a woman artist. Because you are the iconic woman artist. And then in, I think you said the art world on its ear. When you created the dinner party, we'll talk about it. But and what was the date? It premiered at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979. And then it had a long and checkered exhibition tour around the world to a viewing audience of a million people. Yeah. Yeah. And most recent one, free to calo. Yeah, space to face, which I co-wrote with the British art historian, Francis Borzello. And this book has exquisite reproductions of free to work and your work. It is, it is a great work. So, you are an artist, author, feminist, and educator. I'm busy. Yeah. Tell us a little about

your background. How you grew into this amazing role? Well, I grew up in Chicago. I was, my parents were political radicals. My father was descended from 23 generations of rabbis directly. And he was, he broke away. I always tell this story about when my mother and father were courting, they used to go to dinner at my grandmother's house who she kept kosher. It was after my rabbi grandfather had died. And one Friday night, my mother asked my father if he wanted her to learn how to cook kosher. And he said, no, Jewish food makes me sick. And actually that was, you know, he was of that generation. They wanted to separate from the old country, be in American. And consequently, I grew up without knowing much about my heritage. But I grew up drawing. I started to draw when I was three. And I started to go to this Chicago Art Institute when I was five. And I always wanted to be an

artist. And when I was 17, I left. I went to LA where I went to UCLA and got my bachelors and my masters. And this fall, I'm going back to LA for the first of four trips because there's this incredible thing happening in Southern California called Pacific Standard Time. It's this getting initiative that involves every institution from Santa Barbara to San Diego, celebrating and documenting the history of Southern California art from 1945 to 1980, 20 of which years I was there. And I'm really involved in it. In fact, I just got interviewed by the LA Times about Pacific Standard Time because if it's successful, Pacific Standard Time is going to rewrite the history of 20th century art. Absolutely, absolutely. But you know, the scope, the reach of that kind of exhibit involving so many institutions and so many artists. Well, 16 museum exhibitions and 80 gallery exhibitions. So it's going to

be huge. And one thing that's very interesting is the organizers, the two major organizers from the Getty, one of them, Andrew Percha, who's the deputy director of the Getty Research Institute. He told me when he was at Yale, he wanted to write on an artist from Southern California. And Yale people told him, well, there aren't any artists in Southern California except for Bruce Nauman and one other, I think. I mean, they absolutely denied the richness of the history there. So it's going to turn things upside down. And as you mentioned, that's something I always like to do. Yes, you certainly do. But now let's talk about other people that weren't mentioned because as I've read and you, I want you to tell us the story, what made you decide to do an installation as vast and complex as the dinner party? Was it a college professor who had said, well, from the time I was a young artist, I was

very ambitious. My father had raised me to believe that I had a responsibility to make a contribution. And I wanted to make it to art history. And even before I did the dinner party, I did major works. I tried to, I did big scale sculpture. I did major paintings. I did fireworks, but I always was running up against an absence of support because I was a woman because the LAR scene was in the 60s and 70s was exceedingly macho. The way, so the scale of the dinner party, what I'm saying is the scale wasn't so unusual. What was unusual was its content. And what you're talking about about my college experience was that when I was an undergraduate, I took a course at UCLA by a very respected historian whose name I can't remember. And he, at the, it was a course called the intellectual history of Europe. And at the first class, he promised to talk about women's contributions at the last class.

And because I was an ambitious young woman, you know, I was really eager to find out about what women before me had done and had there been women who were ambitious and what did they done? So I waited all semester. In the last class, he came in, you know, those are the days with the tweed jackets, with the leather patches on the elbow. And he like came up to the front of the room and, you know, my mind is a pipe, but he didn't really have a pipe. Anyway, he said, women's contributions, they made none. And that was the prevailing attitude at that time in the late 1960s. And, you know, for a while, I believed it, although it made me feel like a freak, because, you know, I was very ambitious. And if women had never made any contributions, you know, how did I have the nerve to think I could? So after fighting in the art world, struggling, which I documented through the flower for a decade, I decided, and I, you know, I made a modest place for myself in the art world, but I was always bumping up against these kind of walls and barriers like I was told all the time you can't be a woman in an artist too,

like what am I supposed to do about it? Anyway, so I decided this was before any women's studies courses or anything. I decided to start looking back at history, which I think comes to my father, because he was a student of history. So I started looking back at history to see if there were any women who had encountered some of the same obstacles I was encountering. And so I discovered this incredibly rich history. I mean, I took up books from 1893, you know, from the last women's movement, the late 19th century that hadn't been taken out of the library since 1920. And I sort of began to piece together this history. And I got really pissed off, you know, because it was like, maybe I was sensitive to it because of my own experience personally, being deprived of my history as a Jew. Well, there was another history where I was deprived of, you know, as a woman. And so in this case, anger fueled creativity. And I decided to try and share what I had learned with this piece. And again, I think my rabbinic background influenced the way I did it because,

you know, this was the height of modernism. So the idea of teaching through art, I mean, that was not exactly popular. But that's what I wanted to do was teach through art and teach what, like in a literate population, because nobody knew anything about women's history, about this rich heritage that I had uncovered. Well, we're going to look at some pictures of the insulation. The first picture is you in front of, well, just describe what were the shape, how many settings that were, you know, you chose place settings. It's funny, you know, at this point, you know, I lecture, you know, when I lecture, I always ask the audience, how many people don't know what the dinner party is. And it's actually very rare for people at this point not to know that the dinner party is, as I joke, a reinterpretation of the last supper from the point of view of those who've done the cooking throughout history. It's a big open triangular table honoring 39 women who's place settings on the table under the place settings. There are streams of names of other women

whose achievement became the underpinning and the foundation for the achievements of the women on the table. And it's structured as a walk around Western civilization. It's very similar in a sense to how we all learned the history of Western civilization, you know, through these heroic figures, except instead of Alexander the great representing a particular here period of time, a woman represents that period of time. And it's intended not only to honor and celebrate women, it's also meant as a big shriek against the erasure of all these women. And it's also intended to call into question the way history has been written because history has been written in a very exclusive way. It's left out a lot of people, not just women in our own, you know, environment for a long time, the history of Native Americans, of Indians was left out. You know, Western

history was taught with very little respect for their point of view and African American history, Hispanic American history. You know, a lot of those histories have been marginalized and the dinner party calls into question that single narrative, a non-diverse narrative. And that happens because the victor writes the history. And the women have not, you know, now things I hope are changing, but the men dominated. Well, men were in control of the writing of history. And, you know, European white men, not just men in the case of our history. There's a close-up we're going to look at now of the Margaret Sanger play setting. Tell us a little about your choices in that. Well, each woman represents a particular area of achievement. And the thing is that in terms of even the nature of achievement, we had to create new categories because there are a lot of things women did that like founding hospitals, a lot of women founded hospitals, founded museums.

And there's like no category called founder, you know, hospital founder. So we actually had to establish new categories in order to include some of the really important achievements. And Margaret Sanger, I really enjoyed doing the Margaret Sanger play setting. The plate itself is based on a blood-red butterfly called Sangerus. That was interesting. And the runner is based on the reproductive system. And it's stitched in this gorgeous silk on silk fabric. I like that too. And the little capital letter is based on her book on chain motherhood because she believed that only when women were in control of their reproductive process would, and being able to make choices with the world become, you know, a free or more humane place. But the most wonderful thing happened just last summer. You know, through the flower has this award, the Minks Hourback Award, for excellence in education, for teachers, K-12 teachers, who best implement the

Ditter Party K-12 curriculum that we launched here at the State House in 2009. And in the audience, because it's open to the public, in the audience was Margaret Sanger's grandson. And you know what he does? He runs plan parenthood. Oh my goodness. That is wonderful. And he says he goes to visit his grandmother at the Brooklyn Museum where the Ditter Party is housed all the time. Oh, that is great. Oh, and so we have to say for people who don't understand, Margaret Sanger was one of the first persons. She founded plan parenthood and she went to jail for reproductive rights for women. Yes, she went to jail. She used to say, what did she say? You have to look the world in the eye and have, I don't know, like what is this the hell with you look? She stood on street corners. She gave out pamphlets, you know, at a time when it was illegal for anybody to advocate contraception. Well, and as we as we're finishing up talking about the dinner party, we'll look at some other kind

of medium distance shots. So you can see one is at a temporary gallery where it was shown installation and now the last one with those beautiful triangular doors. It's the permanent. It's at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and the Sackler Center and the dinner party. I'm happy to report our accounting for between one third quarter and one third 25 and 30 to 30 percent of the traffic to the Brooklyn Museum. People are coming from all over the world to see it. That's just yeah. Well, as a result of that and on all of your work, I just want to point out some of the awards that you've gotten. The Alice Paul Award from the New Mexican Women's Foundation. That was recent and that thing about that award that's really great is that it's an embroidery, a culture embroidery. It's really beautiful and, you know, of course, free to earth is the president and I'm a great admirer of what free has done with the rag rag rag festival and it's incredible what she's doing. In fact, she invited me to

something this morning today that was a special event, but I couldn't go. No, because you're trying to be receiving an award from the governor. You also got a visionary woman award, a stri-cent award. We know who that's from. You've been named outstanding woman of the year. You've put on the list of the world's most intriguing women and then we have the governor's gallery award, the governor's award and the gallery. Let's just take a moment and talk about this series is called My Accident and tell us what happened to you and then how you and your husband was a collaboration with your husband, Donald Woodman, how you two turned this suffering and this excruciating experience into art? Well, in 1985 by 1985, I'd started coming to Santa Fe in the early 80s. I came here to paint, you know, it's a really sort of standard New Mexico story. First, I came for two months, then I took three weeks and I came for three months, then I was living here. All my stuff was in California. I always thought I'd go back to California

and in the summer of 1985, Donald and I met. Actually, I like to say we ignited at Zizobro because for us later, we got married. I mean, I fell in love, head over heels, like a teenager. Donald always says that after the first week, I threw him out and I'm like, yeah, I threw you out because I'm like, things like this don't happen in real life at least not to me. I mean, you know, just fall head over heels and love with somebody and boom, that's it. But that's what happened. Anyway, so we got married on New Year's Eve and we were living in a house up on Canyon Road that I rented from one of my longtime patrons, Mary Russ Taylor. And I was running up on Upper Canyon Road, which I used to do all the time. I was coming down and I got hit by a pickup truck. And I mean, I was on the side of the road. The guy didn't even see me. He like swore really wide. And actually, this is a really amusing story. So I'm laying there on the ground. I don't know what's, I mean, I have no idea how badly I'm hurt. I'm thinking I don't know

the break something. I don't know what he did. And he kept going except that then he backed up because this car stopped and this couple got out. And the woman came over to me and she said, this is, believe me, this is going to have an outcome. You're going to like the story. And just one thing, while we are telling this story, we are going to show some of the series of the drawings that are on the truck, the photograph by your husband and the shoe that was thrown off and all that. So please continue with this. Okay. So this woman comes up to me and I'm laying on the ground, not knowing how badly I'm hurt. And she says to me, can you tell me your name? So I tell her my name and she says, you're a famous artist. And I'm like, I'm a famous artist. Call an ambulance. And then she says, do you know what Lamaz is? And I said, of course I know what Lamaz is. I did the birth project. She said, can you breathe Lamaz? I'm like, no. She says, you're going to pass out. And I'm like, good. Meanwhile, her husband goes down and knocks on the door and Donald and says to Donald, are you married to Judy Chicago? And he says, yes. And he's, he says, she's on her way to emergency. Okay.

So the interesting part about this story that it doesn't have to do with my accident is seven years later, Donald and I were trying to get find funding to renovate the Berlin hotel which we had bought. And you know, we had just finished the Holocaust project. We were really in debt. We had no verifiable income. All the banks were turning us down. And Donald said, we should get a letter from the state preservation people saying the Berlin hotel is worth saving. So he says, you call Tom Merlin. Why should I call Tom Merlin? Because Tom Merlin and Fran Levine were the people who stopped. And now of course, Fran Levine is the head of the history museum. How's that for anyway? So after I got out of the hospital, I mean, I was really hurt. He broke my pelvis. I lost half my blood in, I have my blood in internal bleeding. I was in intensive care. And you know, it was really scary. I didn't know how badly hurt I was. Donald did. So about three or

four months later, while we, I was healing, Donald and I embarked on our first collaboration. We decided to do a series of paint drawings and photographs recreating the accident. And that was the first time we ever collaborated, although we were planning already to collaborate on what became the Holocaust Project, which took us eight years. Well, the energy in your drawings and then the clarity of his photographs, you know, as we've seen, they're just, they're just vibrant. These are wonderful pieces. And for our audience, what they are coming to Santa Fe, they can go to the fourth floor of the state Capitol and see them in the governor's gallery. They can see six of the 21. And yes, Donald is a wonderful photographer with which anybody knows who saw his show that just came down at Zane Bennett, attractions, addictions, and other codec moments. He also has a very funny sense of humor, which was on full display in that show. Now, you did mention the birth project. I just want to show one image from there. As you talk about it, what was the

birth project? The birth project was a series of painted and needlework images celebrating birth and creation. I did it with needleworkers all over the country. And it traveled for five years to a hundred different exhibitions. And now the core collection is at the Albuquerque Museum, as part of through the Flowers Permanent Placement Program of introducing images that celebrate women into our major institutions. And this particular work is a 14 foot by five foot quilted painting. The quilting was done by a woman named Jacqueline Moore Alexander, who changed her the color of her thread as she moved along my painted image. It's quite a love earth birth. It celebrates the kind of fusion of flesh and landscape. And let there be light. And so you have all of your work as an artist, but then what I'm interested to is in what your

activism is. And you have the dinner party curriculum project, which through your organization, through the flower, tries to educate the public on the importance of art. And it's power encountering the erasure of women's accomplishments. Well, that are recounted in the dinner party. And the way that actually happened was over the years, there have been a lot of K through 12 teachers who have used the dinner party in their classrooms. Sometimes well, sometimes not well. And between 1999 and 2005, I and then Donald and I did residences teaching at different universities. And our last one was at Vanderbilt in 2005. And while we were there, I received a copy of a K through 12 school arts magazine that was presumably a tribute to me in the dinner party. And this teacher met very well. But she did a project with her students of autobiography plates. And that was kind of direct contradiction to what the dinner parties

about, which is about teaching women's history through art. And in fact, to helping particularly girls who often get lost in the personal, transcend the personal and see themselves in history. And so I was, I'd become very good friends with the then wife of the chancellor, Constansky, who was an art educator, an expert in art and public policy. And I said, you know, Constance, this is two years before the dinner party was, this was right two years before the dinner party's permanent housing was going to open. And I said, you know, maybe with the permanent housing, there should be some guidelines for teachers. And she was my guide to K through 12 education. And we developed through the flower working with a group of curriculum writers headed by a very famous curriculum writer named Marilyn Stewart. They all teach at Cuttstown University in Pennsylvania. We developed a free, a series of free downloadable PDF files on through the flowers website. What happened was that it started being downloaded by teachers

all over the world. And we, through the flower, which is a very small organization, started getting a lot of requests where beyond our capacity, you know, like to send people to train, people, teachers in school districts who wanted to use the curriculum. I mean, it's really important to understand and it's something I'm going to talk about on celebration Sunday, which is on October 30th when we celebrate through the flower's achievements. It's really important to understand what a small organization through the flower has always been. And here our goal has been to change history. And one of the things I'm going to talk about is how, and the panelists are going to talk about is how we accomplish that. And one of the particular things we're celebrating in relationship to the curriculum is that Penn Penn State University, which has one of the two most important art education programs in the country, has acquired my

art education archive and the dinner party curriculum, which they're going to keep online in perpetuity and they're integrating into their program, their art education program. And so not only is the dinner party permanently housed, but the curriculum is going to be available for generations of teachers, which means generations of students are going to grow up knowing women's history as a normal part of human history, not as some kind of little add-on as a normal part of human history. And so on October 30th through the flower is having celebrations. Sunday we hope people will come and support through the flower. It's a fundraiser. It's a fun raising day for through the flower, because as I said, we're a very small organization and we've survived most almost entirely on individual donations. Susanna Martinez, do you hear me? I have a lifelong Democrat about to praise private capital.

Yeah. Well, you can praise her also for the award that she's giving you. The governor's award on excellence over the arts. But with through the flower, you are celebrating 35 years of accomplishments through the flower ended up touring the dinner party, caring for it, while until we could find permanent housing, sponsoring, touring and placing the birth project, sponsoring and touring the Holocaust project, doing when we moved it to New Mexico, a lot of public programming, art workshops, panels, lectures. We had an honoring feminist foremothers and we also started the New Mexico Women's Cultural Corridor. That's just what I was going to go to. Linking the different sites in New Mexico. We'll show the map there, but that's really working because there is cultural tourism that's interested in our great women artists. Just quickly mentioned who is on this Women's Cultural Corridor. Well, one of the things I noticed was that there were many sites in New Mexico devoted to women like, for example, Maria Martinez, the great potter who's worked, there's a huge collection at the

Millicent Rodgers Museum, which is a great museum in Taos. There is, of course, the Harwood with Agnes Morton's permanent installation. There's the Georgia O'Keefe, both the House and the Museum. There are a number of sites and also we wanted to highlight the fact that through the flower had gifted its library by and about women to UNM Valencia. It started with 1,000 volumes, which went back to my research on the dinner party, and now there are 2,100 volumes. People have been contributing to it. It's available through inner library loan. So for a little organization, I used to say about through the flower, Small Button Mighty. But in the story of this organization is the story of actually your struggle as a woman artist. This is a wonderful book through the flower, and then we don't want to forget the dinner party, really an extraordinary installation, and I can't thank you enough. Our guest today is Judy

Chicago. Thank you for joining us. And if people want to get tickets for Celebration Sunday, they just go on through theflower.org and click Celebration Sunday. New Mexico, I hope you'll support us. Well, so do I. Thank you so much, Judy Chicago. And I want to thank you our audience for being with us today. This is Lorraine Mills. This is Report from Santa Fe. And we'll see you next week. Past archival programs of Report from Santa Fe are available at the website reportfromsatife.com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at reportfromsatife.com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healy Foundation, Tells New Mexico.