“The Dinner Party”: Truly Abhorrent

At the entrance to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, a sign explains that “The Feminist Art Base may present images directed to adult audiences, and deals with challenging subject matter that may include sexual content or violence.” The art museum employs this sign as a means of allowing it to display obscene or objectionable content without the fear or guilt of exposing children to it. However, never, it seems, did the museum–or the artists, for that matter–contemplate the notion that the content might simply be inappropriate, and that something inappropriate is just that–inappropriate for adults just as well as children. “The Dinner Party” is a truly despicable example, not of art, but of pornography. In fact, the dictionary definition of the word ‘pornography’ could not give a better description of “The Dinner Party”: “obscene writings, drawings, photographs, or the like, especially those having little or no artistic merit.”

Not only is the “artistic” representation an insult to the values of our society, but to many it is a blatant disrespect to feminism, and perhaps more so, the notable women it depicts themselves. It is a mockery and perversion of religious symbols sacred to many religious traditions.

Ms. Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” is simply disgusting. The purpose of art is to evoke meaning but “The Dinner Party” has no purpose other than to provoke. To call it art is to give undue commendation to a wicked endeavor to pervert and poison in the worst way, and an egregious disrespect to all of those who understand and embrace art as a form of meaningful expression. Shame on its fabricator and on the museum for such putrescence.