The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art is located on the fourth floor of the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 500,000 objects. Located near the Prospect Heig ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, United States. Since 2007 it has been the home of

Judy Chicago Judy Chicago (born Judith Sylvia Cohen; July 20, 1939) is an American feminist artist, art educator, and writer known for her large collaborative art installation pieces about birth and creation images, which examine the role of women in history ...

's 1979 installation, ''

The Dinner Party ''The Dinner Party'' is an installation artwork by American feminist artist Judy Chicago. There are 39 elaborate place settings on a triangular table for 39 mythical and historical famous women. Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Eleanor of Aquitaine, ...

''. The Center's namesake and founder, Elizabeth A. Sackler, is a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

art collector A private collection is a privately owned collection of works (usually artworks) or valuable items. In a museum or art gallery context, the term signifies that a certain work is not owned by that institution, but is on loan from an individual ...

, and member of the

Sackler family The Sackler family is an American family who owned the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma and later founded Mundipharma. Purdue Pharma, and some members of the family, have faced lawsuits regarding overprescription of addictive pharmaceutical dr ...

History

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 center, located on the museum's fourth floor, aims to create a compelling and interactive environment to raise awareness and educate about

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

's impact on culture. Since 2007 the Center has been the permanent home of

's landmark feminist work ''

''. 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

''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 Ennead Architects LLP (/ˈenēˌad/) is a New York City-based architectural firm. The firm was founded in 1963 by James Polshek, who left the firm in 2005 when it was known as Polshek Partnership. The firm's partners renamed their practice in mid ...

. ''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.

Past exhibitions

The Center's opening exhibition, "Global Feminisms" was the first international exhibit exclusively dedicated to

feminist art The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to produce feminist art, art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and perception of co ...

from 1990 to the present. It was curated by

Maura Reilly Maura Reilly is the director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, and previously served as the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Reilly is also known for developing the concept of 'curatorial act ...

and

Linda Nochlin Linda Nochlin (''née'' Weinberg; January 30, 1931 – October 29, 2017) was an American art historian, Lila Acheson Wallace Professor Emerita of Modern Art at New York University Institute of Fine Arts, and writer. As a prominent feminist art hi ...

. * "An Art of Our Own: Women Ceramicists from the Permanent Collection", March 23, 2007 – July 26, 2008 * "Artist Project: Between the Door and the Street", October 10–October 20, 2013 * "Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection", October 31, 2008 – April 5, 2009 * "Chicago in L.A.: Judy Chicago's Early Work", 1963–74, April 4–September 28, 2014 * "Eva Hesse Spectres 1960", September 16, 2011 – January 8, 2012 * "The Fertile Goddess", December 19, 2008 – May 31, 2009 * "Ghada Amer: Love Has No End", February 16–October 19, 2008 * "Global Feminisms", March 23–July 1, 2007 * "Global Feminisms Remix", August 3, 2007 – February 3, 2008 * "Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864", January 29–October 17, 2010 * "Judy Chicago's Feminist Pedagogy and Alternative Spaces", September 29–November 16, 2014 * " Käthe Kollwitz: Prints from the 'War' and 'Death' Portfolios", March 15–November 10, 2013 * "Kiki Smith: Sojourn", February 12–September 12, 2010 * "Lorna Simpson: Gathered", January 28–August 21, 2011 * "Materializing 'Six Years': Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, September 14, 2012–February 17, 2013 * "Matthew Buckingham: 'The Spirit and the Letter'", September 3, 2011–January 8, 2012 * "Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919, January 20–August 19, 2012 * "Patricia Cronin: Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found'", June 5, 2009 – January 24, 2010 * "Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses", February 3, 2007 – February 3, 2008 * "Rachel Kneebone: Regarding Rodin", January 27–August 12, 2012 * "Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video", May 1, 2009 – January 10, 2010 * "Sam Taylor-Wood: 'Ghosts'", October 30, 2010 – August 14, 2011 * "Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry's Letters to 'The Ladder'", November 22, 2013 – March 16, 2014 * "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968", October 15, 2010 – January 9, 2011 * "Votes for Women", February 16–November 30, 2008 * "Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey", October 11, 2013 – March 9, 2014 * "Wish Tree", November 15, 2012 – January 6, 2013 * "'Workt by Hand': Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts", March 15–September 15, 2013 * "Beverly Buchanan—Ruins and Rituals", October 21, 2016 – March 5, 2017 * "Marilyn Minter: Pretty/Dirty", November 4, 2016 – May 7, 2017 * "Iggy Pop Life Class by Jeremy Deller", November 4, 2016 – June 18, 2017 * "Infinite Blue", Opened November 25, 2016 * "A Woman's Afterlife: Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt", Opened December 15, 2016 * "Georgia O'Keeffe: Living Modern", March 3–July 23, 2017 * "We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women", 1965–85, April 21–September 17, 2017 * "Roots of 'The Dinner Party': History in the Making", October 20, 2017 - March 4, 2018 * "Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985", April 13–July 22, 2018

Feminist Art Base

An original initiative from the Center for Feminist Art is its "Feminist Art Base, conceptualized by the Center's founding curator,

." This database is a self-generated selection of past and present artists, whose work reflect feminist ideas, investments, and concerns, such as

Karen Heagle Karen Heagle (born 1974) is an American artist, known for autobiographical and art historical subject matter. Her work comments on contemporary culture through a queer perspective with a focus on feminist agendas. Life and education Heagle was b ...

, Julia Kunin and

Clarity Haynes Clarity Haynes is a queer feminist American artist and writer. She currently lives and works in New York, NY. Haynes is best known for her unconventional painted portraits of torsos, focusing on queer, trans, cis female and nonbinary bodies. She i ...

. 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".

First Awards

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: 2016: *

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of ...

2015: *

Miss Piggy Miss Piggy is a The Muppets, Muppet character known for her Breakthrough role, breakout role in the sketch comedy television series ''The Muppet Show''. She is notable for her temperamental diva superstar personality, her tendency to use French l ...

2014: *

Anita Hill Anita Faye Hill (born July 30, 1956) is an American lawyer, educator and author. She is a professor of social policy, law, and women's studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the university's Heller School for Social Policy and ...

2013: *

Julie Taymor Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of ''The Lion King (musical), The Lion King'' debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Awards, Tony Award nominations, with ...

2012: *Associate Justice

Sandra Day O'Connor Sandra Day O'Connor (March 26, 1930 – December 1, 2023) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, O' ...

(retired) *

Marin Alsop Marin Alsop (; born October 16, 1956) is an American conductor. She is the first woman to win the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting and the first conductor to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She is music director laureate of the Baltimor ...

Connie Chung Constance Yu-Hwa Chung Povich (née Chung; born August 20, 1946) is an American journalist who has been a news anchor and reporter for the U.S. television news networks American Broadcasting Company, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC. Some of her m ...

Johnnetta B. Cole Johnnetta Betsch Cole (born October 19, 1936) is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 ...

Wilhelmina Cole Holladay Wilhelmina Cole Holladay (née Cole; October 10, 1922 – March 6, 2021) was an American art collector and patron. She was the co-founder of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2006. Early lif ...

Sandy Lerner Sandy Lerner (born 1955) is an American businesswoman and philanthropist. She co-founded Cisco Systems, and used the money from its sale to pursue interests in animal welfare and women's writing. One of her main projects, Chawton House, is in En ...

* Lucy R. Lippard *Chief

Wilma Mankiller Wilma Pearl Mankiller (; November 18, 1945April 6, 2010) was a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Tribal chief, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah, Oklaho ...

(posthumous) *

Toni Morrison Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, ''The Bluest Eye'', was published in 1970. The critically accl ...

Jessye Norman Jessye Mae Norman (September 15, 1945 – September 30, 2019) was an American opera singer and recitalist. She was able to perform dramatic soprano roles, but did not limit herself to that voice type. A commanding presence on operatic, concert ...

Judith Rodin Judith Rodin (born Judith Seitz, September 9, 1944) is an American research psychologist, executive, university president, and global thought-leader. She served as the 12th president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 2005 to 2017. From 1994 to 2 ...

Muriel Siebert Muriel Faye Siebert (September 12, 1928 – August 24, 2013) was an American businesswoman who was the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and the first woman to head one of the NYSE's member firms. She joined the 1, ...

Susan Stroman Susan P. Stroman (born October 17, 1954) is an American theatre director, choreographer, and performer. Her notable theater productions include ''Oklahoma!'', ''The Music Man'', ''Crazy for You (musical), Crazy for You'', ''Contact (musical), Co ...

Faye Wattleton Faye Wattleton (born Alyce Faye Wattleton; 8 July 1943) is an American reproductive rights activist who was the first African American and the youngest president ever elected of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the first woman sin ...

References

External links

Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art website
{{authority control 2007 establishments in New York City Art museums and galleries established in 2007 Art museums and galleries in New York (state) Brooklyn Museum Women's museums in the United States Feminist art organizations in the United States Feminism in New York City Sackler family