Artist, author, educator, and activist Judy Chicago has one more milestone to add to her celebratory year as she turned 75 this year. Penn State, which acquired her art education archives in 2011, is pleased to announce the creation of the Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal as a new facet of the artist’s online art education archive in The Eberly Family Special Collections Library and used across disciplines. In fact, the archive is so widely used that it has never been in storage and the original archive boxes have had to be replaced.

Judy Chicago sits in front of boxes containing her art education collection while Jackie Esposito looks on. — Photo © Donald Woodman

The Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal was born from Penn State’s 2014 campus-wide, semester-long celebration of Chicago’s archive that concluded with a weekend-long symposium at which Chicago delivered a timely, call-to-action lecture based on her new book “Institutional Time: A Critique of Studio Art Education.”

“My goal was to spark a long-overdue dialogue about the state of studio art education,” says Chicago who developed the first feminist art program at California State University, Fresno in the 1970s, and has taught at Cal-Arts, Indiana University, Bloomington; Duke; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green; and Vanderbilt. “With the creation of the portal, we can now initiate an international online conversation about the current state of studio art education, particularly in relation to issues of content, gender, and diversity. I believe that art education has to be radically improved in order to meet the needs of all students and that Penn State can be a leader in effectuating this change.”

The Judy Chicago Dialogue Portal will launch on September 15, beginning with the first of four sections. The first will be “An Invitation from Judy Chicago,” which will feature the video of Chicago’s Penn State lecture, discussion questions formulated by the artist, a video compilation of her teaching, and a multimedia presentation by Dr. Karen Keifer-Boyd analyzing Chicago’s pedagogy. Subsequently academics, art professionals, and artists will have the opportunity to engage in an online dialogue “Live with Judy Chicago” about the state of studio art education and its future, which will be hosted on the portal on October 25 at 11:00 AM EST. Registration will open on the portal on September 15. Read the full story on Penn State News