Guess Who Came (Again) to ‘Dinner’ for Art

It was Judy Chicago at the other end of the line. “Thirteen women? Oh, my God! That’s the karma of ‘The Dinner Party.’ ”

She’d just been told that 13 of those who’d helped create “The Dinner Party,” her controversial feminist art statement of almost two decades ago, had come together to reinstall it--this time, for the first time, in its hometown.

To grasp the “karma” is to understand that this work is sort of a feminist reinterpretation of “The Last Supper” (with its 13 men), originally conceived to honor 13 real or mythical women--until triple that number were found worthy.

On a recent day at UCLA at the Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood, the 13 L.A.-area women lifted the embroidered table runners they’d stitched long ago in a Santa Monica loft from the crates in which they’d languished since “The Dinner Party’s” 1988 Australian tour.

It was a bittersweet moment. Old friends reunited, reflecting on years gone by, on good times and bad for women artists--and on why “The Dinner Party,” whose birth was a seminal event in their lives, failed to find a permanent home and, indeed, was largely dismissed by the art establishment as pornography or even “grotesque kitsch.”

But this didn’t dim the joy of those who answered the call to the Armand Hammer to put “The Dinner Party” back together, this time as the centerpiece of “Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History,” which will be on view through Aug. 18.

Passing a white-gloved hand lovingly over the runner honoring Anna van Schurman, a Dutch-born 17th century advocate for women’s education, Susan Hill frowned slightly as another woman said how sweet it was, rather like grandma’s cross-stitched sampler.

Those samplers, Hill mentioned, were sewn by women who’d been “taught to darn and mend” and to forget silly notions about education and equality. “This is where they systematically began to break women’s spirits.”

“The Dinner Party,” with its 39 embroidered runners draped over a big, open triangular table, is an intentional bit of irony, making its statement about historical suppression of women through a medium that celebrates traditional “women’s work”--stitching and sewing.

In the late ‘70s, that was hard for some of these women to swallow.

“I was into being a tough feminist,” said Pat Akers, 46, a computer supply saleswoman. But there she was at a latter-day quilting bee.

“The Dinner Party,” conceived by Chicago in 1974, debuted in March 1979 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Since 1975, more than 200 women and a few men had worked without pay to fulfill her dream.

The table--each wing more than 40 feet long--sits on a tile floor bearing the names of 999 women who over the centuries had paved the way for the 39 dinner party honorees. A women’s network of an earlier time.

As for their roles in creation of “The Dinner Party,” the women gathered at the Armand Hammer spoke reverently of the “sense of community” they had felt.

Seeing the textiles up-close again, the women had to laugh when museum staff instructed them about safe handling. “Nobody could love them more than we do,” said fabric artist Terry Blecher, 42.

Blecher missed the 1979 installation. She had met Judy Chicago (nee Cohen) in Chicago years before and, just out of UC Santa Cruz, came for six weeks to lend “The Dinner Party” a hand. She stayed three years, sometimes driving a school bus part-time to survive.

Jill Walsh, wife of Getty Museum Director John Walsh, snapped pictures of her mother, Connie von Briesen, 81, as she helped uncrate. History was repeating itself: Walsh’s daughter, Anne, is one of the 54 artists in the “Sexual Politics” exhibit.

Von Briesen, who learned needlework at her mother’s knee, said her two years’ work on “The Dinner Party” changed her point of view about many things, “coming from sort of a WASPish background in the East. I grew up. I feel I’m a hell of a lot better person.”

“The Dinner Party” alumnae, taking a break, were recalling the excitement of those years. Saving Chicago’s ceramic plates from an earthquake. “The lunch party”--burritos at Lucy’s, around the corner from Chicago’s studio at 1651 18th St. in Santa Monica (now home to Highways and the Electronic Cafe).

What did it all mean?

Hill, 53, today is director of UCLA Extension’s Artsreach program, but in 1975 was first to volunteer. She said “The Dinner Party” helped women artists make the decision not to “withdraw and live among ourselves in our own aesthetics and politics, but to take those out to the world.” It was a giant step, though “we’re still getting zero to 3% of [major gallery] shows, purchase prices are lower and university positions less available.”

Several women called it the most important thing that had ever happened to them, but others said that while it was a life-changing experience, they felt exploited by Chicago. To Ellen Dinnerman, 39, an artist and kindergarten teacher, “The Dinner Party” was “a sweat shop for the greater cause, this greater goal. We did it for the work and for each other.” As Von Briesen put it, “Sometimes inspired, sometimes used.”

It was museum director Henry T. Hopkins, who was director of the San Francisco museum in 1979, who thought it time to bring the work home to L.A., where it had never been exhibited. It’s time, too, he said, to reassess it as “kind of an icon of the ‘70s . . . really a testament to the past,” hardly outrageous in the ‘90s. (In today’s context, some have said, “The Dinner Party” looks like a tea party.)

Chicago hopes that this show will be the catalyst for a historical reappraisal of “The Dinner Party”--and will help it find a permanent home. It deserves one, Hopkins said, but his museum hasn’t the space.

At 56, Chicago has moved beyond giving feminist artists a voice--”That’s not where I am now.” She is working for institutional changes without which “the story of ‘The Dinner Party’ will continue--the excision of history.”

As for the women of “The Dinner Party,” said Linda Preuss, 43, a weaver and computer consultant: “We will always be connected.”