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Judy Chicago’s art installation The Dinner Party celebrates historical women and theirachievements, and is considered one of the first epic feminist art pieces. Although The Dinner Party’s huge popularity, Judy Chicago received a lot of criticism regarding her feministagenda and her choices about which women are included in The Dinner Party and how theyare portrayed. The aim of this essay is to explore how The Dinner Party was received in thesecond wave of feminism that it was produced during, what it has meant for the feministmovement and for feminist art through a historical background, contextualize and nuance thecriticism, while also analyzing whether The Dinner Party would still be considered asfeminist art in today’s modern society. The essay is also focused on the symbolism in the artinstallation, the ceramics and the crafts, with help from Roland Barthes method for semioticimage analysis.

Judy Chicago’s art installation The Dinner Party celebrates historical women and theirachievements, and is considered one of the first epic feminist art pieces. Although The Dinner Party’s huge popularity, Judy Chicago received a lot of criticism regarding her feministagenda and her choices about which women are included in The Dinner Party and how theyare portrayed. The aim of this essay is to explore how The Dinner Party was received in thesecond wave of feminism that it was produced during, what it has meant for the feministmovement and for feminist art through a historical background, contextualize and nuance thecriticism, while also analyzing whether The Dinner Party would still be considered asfeminist art in today’s modern society. The essay is also focused on the symbolism in the artinstallation, the ceramics and the crafts, with help from Roland Barthes method for semioticimage analysis.

The main aim of this study is to answer the hypothesis that Judy Chicago's 1971 photolithograph "Red Flag", along with her academic career, can be seen as an answer to the new approach to art history and what defines art, that Linda Nochlin calls for in her essay "Why have there been no great women artists?". The analysis of "Red Flag", which depicts a bloodfilled tampon being removed from a woman's vagina, is then compared to Liv Strömquist's 2014 silk screen print "Isprinsessa", a drawing of a figure skater showing menstrual leakage while engaging in a pirouette, with the purpose to examine the aesthetics of menstruation art as a feminist statement in the second and third wave of feminism respectively, and as a genre within the movement. By using a sociological approach and analyzing the works' social context along with the aesthetics, in a gender theory based outset, it becomes clear that both artists are working out of a will to protest against injust taboos and social inequalities, experienced and observed by them both. Although the movement itself has evolved and grown into multiple variations of feminism wherein menstruation's symbolic meaning of womanhood is disputed, menstrual activism is still a growing concern within the feminist movement today, as the taboos surrounding the topic are still very evident. The results of the study show that as Nochlin and Chicago, both being active in the same time and area, the early 1970s feminist movement, have asked themselves the same question, but expressed their solution in different ways – Nochlin suggests scientific objectivity as the course of action, while Chicago considers a provocative and head-on approach to stir up deeply rooted patriarchal praxis within the academic field of art and art history.

As of June, 15 of the audio and video collections in the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives have been digitized and processed. Most of the collections hold between 15 and 40 audiocassette tapes or VHS tapes. The content of the material includes recordings of conferences, workshops, meetings, performances, radio and news broadcasts, interviews, and oral histories concerning topics such as homosexuality, lesbian issues, feminism, racism, discriminations, literature, music, history, and so on.Of particular note is the June L. Mazer and Bunny MacCulloch Interviews Etc collection, which includes interviews with Mazer and MacCulloch concerning the Southern California Women for Understanding (SCWU), the archive, Mazer’s death, and lesbian culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. The audio recordings provide great insight into the life and work of both Mazer and MacCulloch, who were prominent figures in the lesbian community of the West Coast. The women conducted interviews with scholars and other experts on lesbian culture and history and were also the subjects of interviews. The collection includes a recording of the Jewish memorial service that honored the life and work of Mazer after her death in 1987.

As of June, 15 of the audio and video collections in the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives have been digitized and processed. Most of the collections hold between 15 and 40 audiocassette tapes or VHS tapes. The content of the material includes recordings of conferences, workshops, meetings, performances, radio and news broadcasts, interviews, and oral histories concerning topics such as homosexuality, lesbian issues, feminism, racism, discriminations, literature, music, history, and so on.Of particular note is the June L. Mazer and Bunny MacCulloch Interviews Etc collection, which includes interviews with Mazer and MacCulloch concerning the Southern California Women for Understanding (SCWU), the archive, Mazer’s death, and lesbian culture in the San Francisco Bay Area. The audio recordings provide great insight into the life and work of both Mazer and MacCulloch, who were prominent figures in the lesbian community of the West Coast. The women conducted interviews with scholars and other experts on lesbian culture and history and were also the subjects of interviews. The collection includes a recording of the Jewish memorial service that honored the life and work of Mazer after her death in 1987.