Revelations is the work that Judy Chicago believed would never be published: a radical retelling of human history in the form of an illuminated manuscript, recovering stories of women that society sought to erase. Begun alongside her iconic installation The Dinner Party in the mid-1970s, and drawing on her intensive research into goddess worship and women’s history, Revelations is foundational to Chicago’s decades-long practice. It is at once a vibrant narrative and a work of art, fifty years in the making.
Reviews
A sprawling, five-chapter narrative in vivid vignettes telling of the ageless fight for power between men and women… The stories of fortitude in the face of rejection, violence and humiliation form a litany that is enraging and astonishing, though not unfamiliar.
— The New York Times
Contributors
Judy Chicago
Author
Judy Chicago is an artist, author, feminist, and educator whose career spans nearly six decades. Her work has been the subject of major retrospectives at Serpentine (2024), the New Museum (2023), and the de Young Museum (2021), and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; the British Museum; the de Young Museum; the Getty Trust; the Hammer Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Moderna Museet; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate; and more than twenty-five university art museums.
Martha Easton
Text By
Martha Easton is an art historian specializing in medieval art and architecture. She is Associate Professor of Art History and Program Director of Museum Studies at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, PA. Her research and publications have centered on illuminated manuscripts, gender and hagiography, feminist theory, medievalism, and the collecting of medieval art during later periods.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
Text By
Hans Ulrich Obrist is Artistic Director at Serpentine in London and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the Curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Bettina Korek
Contributions By
Bettina Korek is Chief Executive of Serpentine, Kensington Gardens. For more than half a century, Serpentine has built new connections between artists and audiences via a pioneering program of contemporary art exhibitions, architecture, live events, and projects that explore ecology, community, and emerging technologies.
Chris Bayley
Text By
Chris Bayley is Associate Exhibitions Curator at Serpentine in London.
Donald Woodman
Contributions By
Donald Woodman is a photographer whose career spans more than five decades. He has spent nearly forty years working with his wife, Judy Chicago, overseeing the photography for many of her publications. His solo work is included in private and public collections in the US and internationally.
