This past summer I went to see, for the first time, Judy Chicago’s notorious The Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum, its first permanent home since its creation in 1979. The work—which spurred heated controversy and a plethora of both hostile and heartfelt responses—represents a dinner party of thirty-nine accomplished but largely forgotten women from history; each attendee is symbolized by her own place setting, including a plate illustrating her genitals. Having studied feminist art for nearly a decade, I was looking forward to this moment—mainly for the chance to see the thing of myth, to put a face to a name, to see a relic with my own eyes. But, in retrospect, what I did not expect was to actually look at the work—to use my eyes. What surprised me about the art was the work itself. It was elegant, filled with lustrous surfaces and neat ceramics, along with painstakingly detailed, colorful, and vibrant needlework—a highlight is a stitched, three-dimensional graphic rendition of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, both moving and light, appealing and horrific at the same time. It almost came as a surprise to me: The Dinner Party, so shrouded in narratives of...