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149 CHAPTER FIVE Going Public The Dinner Party in San Francisco, 1979 the scheduled opening for The Dinner Party—March 1979—loomed large over the studio. The group worked a grueling schedule to finish, their lives outside the studio seeming to shrink as the opening date approached. Yet in the face of the tremendous task of completing The Dinner Party, keeping the studio financially afloat also required a tremendous amount of energy and sacrifice. That story—of the finances of The Dinner Party—warrants historical attention. It too represents the ways that the women involved in the project practiced feminism. The feminism practiced in this arena was not cultural in terms of its orientation. It was far too focused on the nuts and bolts of money, museums, and donors to consider goddesses and ritual. But the story of the money that funded Chicago testifies to the ways feminism in the 1970s connected women in networks that ran across business, culture industries, granting agencies, and city politics. It also testifies to the ways that money—from donations to ticket sales— spoke loudly and clearly for the public’s interest in feminist art. Sacrifice (not only money) shaped this history. Six core Dinner Party workers drew a small salary to keep them (barely) afloat; the artist herself worked without a salary or health insurance. She sold her paintings and sketches and gave supporters and workers her art or traded it for muchneeded services. She contributed all her royalties from Through the Flower to the project. These funds, as well as the large grants Gelon helped secure, kept the studio doors opened. But it left Chicago without any safety net or plan B if The Dinner Party did not secure her a financial backer in the shape of a major gallery, patron, or museum tour. As Chicago began working on The Dinner Party in 1974, the monies flowing through the studio were relatively small. Chicago’s accounting records 150 chapter five from 1974 show her raising money by selling work (for example, us authoractivist Rita Mae Brown bought a drawing for $600 and Barbara Seaman for $1,000), lecturing for a fee between $200 and $350 at colleges and universities , and running a two-day workshop for $1,000. Donations came in the form of cash ($100 to $200 each) or materials.1 A generous supporter set up an account for the artist at a local art store to keep her in supplies.2 Chicago took in just under $15,000 in 1974. In the next four years, Chicago’s earning and expenses grew in tandem. Between 1975 and the opening at San Francisco in early 1979, Chicago earned $23,130 from lecturing, ranging from $200 at uc Irvine in 1975 to $1,000 at Fresno in 1978; all of it went into The Dinner Party. Chicago also steadily increased the amount of money she took in from selling her art. As her reputation grew, her earnings from selling her work nearly trebled, from $6,610 in 1976 to $17,470 in 1978.3 At the same time, the amount of materials she required also grew, keeping the studio running on the thinnest of margins. Chicago sold her drawings of Hypatia for $800, Boadaceia for $1,250, and Sojourner Truth for $1,500 in the year before the opening. In 1978, the artist’s sales, lectures, and royalties amounted to $32,000, all of which she put into the studio.4 Subsequent accounting for the cost of making The Dinner Party never included the overhead costs of the studio, salaries, or the value of the art Chicago sold or gave away.5 To get The Dinner Party ready to go public, much had to happen and all of it required money. Chicago’s promotional lectures and art sales alone could not fund the studio fully. Monies had to be raised and audiences cultivated . Between 1977 and 1979 these things became deeply intertwined, foremost through the efforts of Diane Gelon. She took over fund-raising and promotion after the studio restructured itself in 1977, and she spent the next two years leading up to the San Francisco opening in a whirlwind of activity. She lectured to groups of women, students, and art groups in various venues: in university lecture halls, art museums, bookstores, and living rooms. She gave interviews, or scheduled Chicago for interviews, with local and national newspapers and with feminist and art publications; she scheduled studio tours with notables, including prominent museum...

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