What:
Fireworks Performance Piece by Artist Judy Chicago
When:
Saturday, April 26, 7:30 p.m.
Where:
Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Long Meadow
A Butterfly for Brooklyn, a monumental pyrotechnic performance piece by artist Judy Chicago, whose work The Dinner Party has become a feminist icon, will be presented in Prospect Park at twilight on Saturday, April 26, by the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum in partnership with the Prospect Park Alliance. A Butterfly for Brooklyn will transform the imagery the artist used in The Dinner Party into a twenty-minute fusion of color and dazzling visual effects in Prospect Park’s Long Meadow. It will measure approximately 200 by 180 feet and will appear to levitate, swirl, and move.
This program is organized by Catherine J. Morris, Sackler Family Curator, with Jess Wilcox, Programs Coordinator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Major support is provided by Barbara and Eric Dobkin. Additional support provided by The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation, Tides Foundation, and by Barbara Lee.
The project is an outdoor component of the exhibition Chicago in L. A.: Judy Chicago’s Early Work, 1963-74, on view at the Sackler Center at the Brooklyn Museum through September 28. Recent pyrotechnic performances by Judy Chicago were presented in California as a part of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s critically acclaimed 2011-12 curatorial initiative Pacific Standard Time. These recent fireworks pieces were inspired by an increasingly complex series of works called Atmospheres that Chicago created at various West Coast locales between 1968 and 1974. The final piece in that series, presented on the shores of Lake Merritt in Oakland, was the last environmental work she would complete for more than three decades.
Chicago in L. A.: Judy Chicago’s Early Work, 1963-74, the first survey on the East Coast of Chicago’s early career, continues the reappraisal of the artist’s importance as a pioneer in the California art scene through more than fifty-five objects. The Dinner Party, on permanent view at the Brooklyn Museum, was a gift to the Museum from the Elizabeth A. Sackler Foundation in 2003 and installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art when it first opened in March 2007. The installation honors the achievements of women over the millennia by featuring craft forms that until recently were not considered part of the fine arts.
