Judy Chicago Featured in New York Times Style Magazine

Judy Chicago (HON 2018) was featured in the New York Times Style Magazine in the article "What Should an Artist Save?" about artists and their archives. " Archives possess an inherent power—they are the authority on what or who will remain within the historical narrative," says the article. The article begins with Chicago's work The Dinner Party, which after a humiliating critical reception at its debut in 1979, Chicago put the work into storage. When Mary Ross Taylor, one of the administrators who then ran Chicago’s feminist nonprofit approached the Smithsonian Institution's Archive of Art to acquire the research material related to The Dinner Party, they declined only to change their minds in the late 1990s. But at that point, Chicago refused. "She had learned an unforgettable lesson from her initial rejection—her archive is her legacy. It is what will remain when she is no longer alive, and both its safekeeping and accessibility are of the utmost importance to her," says the article. 

In addition to Chicago, Donald Judd, Louise Bourgeois, and David Wojnarowicz are among other artists included in the article. "We value archives because we value the life that preceded them. But artists are not perfectly self-aware, and they owe neither us, nor posterity, an explanation for what they value or what they choose to ignore. What always remains is the work, and then the archive," states the writer's conclusion.