The Brooklyn Museum

In the Brooklyn Museum we saw many feminist exhibits, Judy Chicago and Kiki Smith as well as a display of historical American fashion, almost overwhelming me with a feminine perspective rather than the typical starting point of masculine culture as some museums tend to have. Most of my class were excited about seeing Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party. I suppose I would be too if I had studied it to the extent that my feminist peers had and as an artist I was excited to see it, but Kiki Smith’s Sojourn dominated my thoughts for the entire excursion.

The Dinner Party was as magnificent as I expected, in a large room that was built just for it; triangular to encompass it in an aesthetic way. I was amazed at the details that did not come across in publications; the tile floor depicting the names of women was beautifully constructed, unifying the sides of the triangle. While some plates are commonly depicted in reproductions, including Emily Dickenson, it was wonderful to be able to see the women Judy Chicago decided to include and who she decided to leave out. The piece celebrates the lives of women from a second wave feminist viewpoint, excluding women of colour and women of lower classes which were not embraced as part of feminism until slightly after the creation of this work. The point of this work was to be gender specific in a second wave feminist kind of manner, which excluded the male entirely. James became the only masculine identity in the room, a minority rather than a dominant gender. Chicagos intention was to accentuate the female identity rather than the male, and it was successful.

Finally being able to move onto Kiki Smith’s exhibit Sojourn, I was excited to get to see Kiki Smiths use of texture and line, her choice of subject matter that has changed greatly from her earlier work that I adore. Her work is not always about gender per se but involves identity from a female point of view including feminist viewpoints. Sojourn focussed on women artists and the milestones in their lives including images of women of all ages, her doll figures with enlarged heads as softly formed figures in feminine poses such as the cast metal doll with a bird perched on her hand, a figure caught in childhood. These works look feminine and doll like yet are made of a hard metal that ensures the viewer of its strong stability despite the soft contours that define the figure. This strength is mimicked in her soft drawings of women in defiant stances on soft wrinkled Nepal paper of different life stages from birth to death. The feminist presence was dominant in these works, but was not as obvious as in The Dinner Party.