Judy Chicago
Women's collective histories inspired Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (1974-79). A monumental testament to women's historical and cultural contributions, in incorporated sculpture, ceramics, china painting, and needlework. Begun in 1974 with the help of industrial designer Ken Gilliam, by 1979 it had been worked on by more than one hundred women. The piece attracted some of the largest crowds to ever attend a museum exhibition - it was view by some 100,000 people - when it opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in April 1979.
It consisted of an equilateral triangle of 48 feet a side with 39 place settings commemorating women in history and legend with an additional 999 names inscribed on the marble floor beneath. Each place included a ceramic plate, with a central raised motif designed by Chicago to symbolize the woman honored, a brilliantly colored runner executed in needlework techniques appropriate to the subject's period, and a chalice.