JUDY CHICAGO, American artist. Chicago’s brilliant “The Dinner Party” now on permanent display in the Elizabeth Sackler Center Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum traces the herstory of great women and comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history.

The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with raised central motifs that are based on vulvar and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honored. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.

This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating biographical gallery shows relating to the 1,038 women honored at the table. Pharaohs, Queens and Goddesses at the Brooklyn Museum was the first such exhibition.