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In 1973 Judy Chicago launched yet another feminist art project: with art historian Arlene Raven and designer Sheila de Bretteville she founded in Los Angeles the Feminist Studio Workshop, an independent institution dedicated to perfecting the artmaking and leadership skills of its students. The Feminist Studio Workshop created a congenial environment for itself by opening the Woman's Building, a facility that leased space to feminist theatre groups, political organizations, and publishers in addition to providing galleries for Womanspace. The Woman's Building took its name from a historical example of cooperative artistic effort, namely, the pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition whose architect, managers, and contributing artists were all women. 

On November 28, 1973 the Woman's Building celebrated its opening, attended by 5,000 people, with special exhibitions in its several galleries. In Gallery Grandview One Judy Chicago mounted a solo show to unveil the Great Ladies (1972-73) and the Reincarnation Triptych (1973). The former series of canvases presents the personalities of particular historical queens through the use of undulating abstract imagery, vibrating colors, and the handwritten captions that Judy Chicago considers important as a means of clarifying the feminist content of her imagery. Melinda Terbell of Art News (February 1974) praised the Great Ladies for their "intense impact" but reserved her real accolades for the Reincarnation Triptych, a set of three canvases representing Mme, de Staël, George Sand, and Virginia Woolf. According to the artist, the differences among the three paintings represent the growth of feminine consciousness throughout the past 200 years as well as the stages of her own development as a feminist artist. 

Throughout the 1970's the work of Judy Chicago appeared in solo and group shows throughout the United States—at the Whitney Museum's exhibition "The Structure of Color" in New York City in 1971; the Jack Glenn Gallery of Corona del Mar, California and the University of Washington at Seattle in 1972; the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks and the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara, California in 1973; the Kenmore Gallery of Philadelphia and Western Washington State College in Bellingham in 1974; Cerritos College of Newark, California in 1975; and the Quay Ceramics Gallery of San Francisco and the Ruth Schaffner Gallery of Los Angeles in 1976. Judy Chicago was also represented in Canada at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1975 and in England at the JPL Fine Arts Gallery in 1976. Her work in visual art and feminist education brought her Mademoiselle magazine's Women of achievement award for 1973. 

In 1975 Doubleday published Judy Chicago's autobiography, Through the Flower: My Struggles as a Woman Artist, which examines her past from a perspective attained through years of psychoanalysis. Replete with her observations about feminine imagery and ideas in art and literature. Through the Flower was well received by many book reviewers and became an important text for study in feminist programs. Even its most ardent admirers, however, questioned Judy Chicago's capability as a writer and deplored the slipshod editing of her book, while its detractors were quick to denounce its clichéd and ungrammatical style. 

By the time Through the Flower had begun to generate its share of controversy, Judy Chicago was already absorbed by an ambitious project that combined feminist art and education. Because of her growing interest in china painting as an unappreciated women's artform, she originally planned to make a new series of Great Ladies paintings on porcelain plates to hang on gallery walls. To underscore her conviction that women of achievement are often swallowed up by history, she intended to call her plates Twenty-Five Women Who Were Eaten Alive. When she decided to incorporate them into the place settings of a banquet table for important mythic and historic women of Western civilization, the concept of The Dinner Party was born. To complete her project, Judy Chicago organized a collective workshop in her studio in Santa Monica, where 400 volunteers toiled under the direction of Diane Gelon, chief administrator and fundraiser; Leonard Skuro, technical adviser for ceramics; and Susan Hill, coordinator of needlework. 

The finished art work, first presented to the general public at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on March 16, 1979, overwhelmed viewers with the immensity of its scale and the intricacy of its detail. The banquet table consists of three wings, each one measuring 46 1/2 feet in length and displaying, atop linen table cloths, thirteen place settings complete with plate, cup, knife, fork, spoon, napkin, and embroidered linen runner. Judy Chicago chose thirteen as a number that recalls both the number of guests at the Last Supper and of witches in a coven. Each plate represents the honored guest herself, and the corresponding linen runner depicts either scenes from her life or symbols of the society in which she lived. The first wing honors women from prehistoric through Greco-Roman times, the second, from the early Church era through the Reformation, and the third, from the 17th through the 20th centuries. The table rests upon the porcelain tiles of the Heritage Floor, which bears the names of 999 other women of achievement. 

After the San Francisco showing ended in June 1979, The Dinner Party moved to a warehouse because both the Seattle Art Museum and the Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester had cancelled their exhibition contracts. In March 1980 The Dinner Party resurfaced for a three-month show at the University of Houston at Clear Lake City, Texas. After that, it traveled to the Boston Center for the Arts for an Independence Day opening and finished the year by spending fall and winter at the Brooklyn Museum.

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