Brooklyn, NY—The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opens in dazzling new quarters at the Brooklyn Museum on Friday, March 23, 2007. As the first public space of its kind in the country, the Center’s mission is to present feminist art and to explore its meaning and influence through a wide range of public programs.

An icon of American art, The Dinner Party  by Judy Chicago, is at the spatial and symbolic heart of the new 8,300-square-foot facility. Encircled by galleries for changing exhibitions and a space for educational activities, The Dinner Party’s gallery is the centerpiece of a dramatic design conceived and developed by award-winning architect Susan T. Rodriguez, FAIA, a partner in Polshek Partnership Architects. Maura Reilly, Ph.D., is Curator of the Center.

Three inaugural exhibitions open on March 23rd: Global Feminisms, an international survey of contemporary feminist art, co-organized by Dr. Maura Reilly and the noted art historian and Institute of Fine Arts Professor Linda Nochlin; Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses, the first of a series of biographical shows based on the figures and themes of The Dinner Party, co-organized by Dr. Reilly and Edward Bleiberg, Curator of Egyptian Art; and the unveiling of The Dinner Party, which was donated to the Brooklyn Museum in 2002 by The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation and is part of the Museum’s permanent collection.

The dramatic sight of large, canting glass walls and an anticipatory first glimpse of The Dinner Party greet the visitor upon arrival at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, located on the fourth floor and flanked by the Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing special exhibitions galleries on the one side and the Museum’s Decorative Arts collection on the other. From the portal, the visitor moves through a distinct, yet interconnected, series of gallery experiences that include an enveloping zone of changing exhibition galleries, a study center, and the inner sanctum of The Dinner Party gallery. By placing the large-scale, triangular The Dinner Party  at its heart, the architect was able to reconcile its monumental scale and triangular shape with the rectilinear space of the Center.

After approaching The Dinner Party  by way of a vivid red wall, upon which Chicago’s Entry Banners, a series of Aubusson tapestries, are displayed, the visitor enters through a door set into the apex of the triangular inner gallery. Here, The Dinner Party gallery contrasts strikingly with other “white box” galleries in the Center. Large glass tablets line sloped walls, casting reflections of the installation work, the gallery, and those within it that symbolize the ubiquitous influence of Chicago’s “guests” and the non-linear aspect of the viewer’s relationship to them over time. A counter-clockwise pathway along the perimeter of the “dinner” table permits close-up viewing of the work’s 39 place settings, each of which celebrates a significant woman in history. The intricate details of the place settings are illuminated by a lighting system anchored on a metal armature dropped from the ceiling.

Immediately outside this central gallery, the visitor enters an exhibition space where panels mounted on slender columns and a pair of flat-screen monitors provide biographical material about the powerful women in history whom Chicago “invited” to The Dinner Party, and information on the research behind the project. From here, a visitor can move into the study center, a simple rectangular room that can be transformed from an academic forum into a multimedia gallery, as required, by a large pivoting wall.

Since it was first presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1979, The Dinner Party  by Judy Chicago has been seen by more than one million people on three continents. The Brooklyn Museum first displayed the installation in 1980, as the fourth venue in a national tour. In 2002, The Dinner Party was gifted to the Brooklyn Museum by The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. Later that year, the work went on temporary exhibition for four months. Kay Larson, writing for the Village Voice, called The Dinner Party, “The first epic feminist artwork.” One of Chicago’s aims in creating the monumental installation was to end the on-going cycle of omission in which women’s achievements are repeatedly written out of the historic record—a cycle of repetition that results in generation after generation of women struggling for insights and freedoms that are too often quickly forgotten or erased again.

A patron of the arts and a Public Historian, Elizabeth A. Sackler was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Brooklyn Museum in the autumn of 2000. Dr. Sackler is president and CEO of the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, president of The Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation, the founder and president of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation, and sits on the National Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. A lecturer, panelist and writer, she has published articles concerning the repatriation of ceremonial material to Native Americans in national magazines, as well as papers on the ethical issues that confront the Indian Art Market in scholarly journals and anthologies. She is the editor of the 2002 book, Judy Chicago, a survey of the artist’s work. Dr. Sackler has been the recipient of many awards and citations; most recently, in 2006, she was honored with ArtTable’s prestigious Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts.

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art was established through the generosity of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation. Additional support was contributed by the Mayor of the City of New York and the New York City Council through funds administered by the Department of Cultural Affairs.