Abstract
In this article, internationally renowned artist and educator Judy Chicago reflects on her teaching and on my own interpretation of her pedagogy in three projects: Womanhouse (1971–1972), At Home (2001–2002), and Envisioning the Future (2003–2004). From a comparison of pre- and post-open-ended questionnaire responses given by 62 participants in the Envisioning the Future (ETF) project, I identified aspects of Chicago's methodology that make it unique from other studio teaching approaches. Gender, status, and ideology emerge as significant themes in the analysis of eight artist-educators' experiences who learn Chicago's teaching methodology in a 10-day workshop and subsequently are guided by Chicago in their semester-long facilitation of artmaking groups of the 62 participants in the ETF project. I distinguish Chicago's teaching methodology from common threads of feminist pedagogy. These threads include the following goals: effecting social change; envisioning teaching as a political act; viewing knowledge as value-laden; valuing personal experience and self-representation; providing avenues for multivocality, and sharing leadership in student-centered environments. The focus is on Chicago's primary teaching goal, which is to facilitate the creation of “content-based art of high quality.”