Smith Center for the Arts

The documentary Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party follows the creation of Chicago’s multi-media exhibit that centers the influence of women throughout the ages. First displayed in 1979, Chicago’s artistic tribute to women of achievement consists chiefly of painted ceramics and needlework. Among The Dinner Party’s conceptual attendees are Sacajawea, Sojourner Truth, Elanor of Aquitaine, Empress Theodora of Byzantium, Virginia Woolf, Susan B. Anthony and Georgia O’Keeffe. Of particular interest to Geneva residents, one of Chicago’s legendary women is Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to earn a medical degree (1849), which was conferred upon her by Geneva Medical College. Critically panned when it was first exhibited, The Dinner Party has since been recognized as a monumental work and has been on permanent display in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum since 2007.

The creation of The Dinner Party took five years, during which time Chicago worked with a community of four hundred other artists, craftspeople and researchers. For more than four of those five years, filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas followed the progress of the creators, documenting the alternately painstaking and exhilarating process of creating this work. Chicago commented that Right Out of History “is a unique document … the only record of a contemporary working community of artists, a community which provides insights into the ateliers, workshops and guilds of the past … it is the only record of a community of primarily women trying to transform their experience into a work of art.”

This screening commemorates the. induction of Judy Chicago into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. The 2022 induction ceremony will be held at The Smith Opera House on September 24th. More information and tickets for that event are available on the Smith’s website here.