"The Dinner Party": Wing Three Quiz

Answer: Sacajawea

Sacajawea is one of those female icons, like Cleopatra or Pocahontas, that people think they know something about but who has ended up being rather one-dimensional. Sacajawea did much more than guide Lewis and Clark and then quietly go away until reappearing on the US dollar coin with her baby on her back. It is of interest that the official guide to Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" states that Sacajawea was included in the artwork as "an example of European exploitation".

Sacajawea's "Dinner Party" plate is painted with a traditional star-shaped Native American design.

Anne Hutchinson, also honored in "The Dinner Party", was an American colonist who challenged church doctrine and was excommunicated and banished.

Answer: Astronomy

The German-born Herschel was responsible for discovering eight comets and cataloguing thousands of nebulae and star clusters. The embroidered runner at her "Dinner Party" place setting reflects this work.

The 28 plates that precede Herschel's in the 39-setting "Dinner Party" are all flat, like conventional plates. With Herschel, the designs begin to emerge from the surface. They rise, they assert themselves. The ten women with whom the artwork concludes are not going to be ignored any longer.

Answer: She was an author and a feminist theoretician

Mary Wollstonecraft, although most famous as an early feminist, wrote in many genres, including politics, history, travel and even romance. She suffered a difficult childhood, a series of disappointments in relationships, and ultimately death in childbirth, which unfortunately predated any notion of asepsis by several decades. The runner upon which her "Dinner Party" plate is placed shows this grisly scene in delicate embroidery.

The famous composer honored with a "Dinner Party" place setting is Ethel Smyth (1858-1944); the gay feminist writer was Natalie Barney (1876-1972).

Answer: All of these

Born into slavery, Isabella Baumfree (Sojourner Truth) is best remembered as a passionate speaker on Christian and Abolitionist themes, but she was also a feminist. Her 1851 speech "Ain't I A Woman?" must have caused quite a stir. It's still fascinating reading.

The Sojourner Truth plate departs from the vaginal/butterfly imagery of much of the rest of "The Dinner Party". The plate attempts to express the pain of the female African-American experience. See it for yourself to judge how well it works.

Answer: Table Runner

As conceived by Judy Chicago, each woman's goblet and ceramic eating utensils are identical. Although not historically accurate for each woman's time period, this is meant to underscore the basic similarity between women. However, each woman's painted plate and embroidered or otherwise decorated table runner is unique.

Answer: Elizabeth Blackwell

Although "The Dinner Party" has only 39 place settings, each of these honors several dozen or more other notable women, whose 999 names appear in gold on the Heritage Floor on which the artwork rests.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) was the first American woman to graduate from medical school. She was also an author, abolitionist, and founded Women's Medical Colleges in the USA and England.

Answer: It's pink and frilly

Ms. Dickinson, who lived from 1830-1886, began her poem "A Prayer" with these words:

"I meant to have but modest needs,
Such as content, and heaven;
Within my income these could lie,
And life and I keep even."

Her frilly pink "Dinner Party" plate seems, to many viewers, not in keeping with Emily's New England Congregational upbringing.

Answer: All of these

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) is considered to be the the founder of family planning. A complex and controversial woman, she was also involved in socialism and eugenics. Her 1916 publication "What Every Girl Should Know" was an early attempt to teach women about their bodies.

Ms. Sanger's "Dinner Party" plate is the only one of the 39 to be entirely red. It looks like a brilliant raised butterfly, or perhaps a cadeuceus (symbol of the medical profession).

Answer: Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is one of the shining lights of 20th-century literature. The author, a probable victim of childhood sexual abuse in her own home, fought a disabling mental disorder to produce more than two dozen works of fiction, biography and non-fiction before her death by suicide. The recent popular film "The Hours", while not accepted as accurate by all Woolf scholars, has inspired a resurgence of interest in the author's work.

Ethel Smyth and Vita Sackville-West were two of Ms. Woolf's lovers; Clarissa Dalloway is one of her most famous literary creations.

Answer: External female genitalia

Although many of Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party" plates suggest feminist power themes, Georgia O'Keeffe's plate looks the most overtly vaginal. This is appropriate both because O'Keeffe's flower paintings often look like female genitalia and because her plate is last and thus symbolic of the distance women have come since the very first "Dinner Party" place setting, Primordial Goddess.

I hope you have enjoyed this, the third of my "Dinner Party" quizzes.