Her most well-known work is The Dinner Party, which is permanently installed in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

[2][10] Arthur's active participation in the American Communist Party, liberal views of women, and support of workers' rights strongly influenced Chicago's own values and thought.

[11] During the American McCarthy era, Arthur was investigated, which made it difficult for him to find work and caused the family much turmoil.

[17] In 1969, the Pasadena Art Museum exhibited a series of Chicago's spherical acrylic plastic dome sculptures and drawings in an "experimental" gallery.

"[18] Chicago would also experiment with performance art, using fireworks and pyrotechnics to create "atmospheres," which involved flashes of colored smoke being manipulated outdoors.

The works blended colors to create an illusion that the shapes "turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, gesture, wiggle," representing her own discovery that "I was multi-orgasmic."

Chicago credited "Pasadena Lifesavers", as being the major turning point in her work in relation to women's sexuality and representation.

[22] Chicago is considered one of the "first-generation feminist artists," a group that also includes Mary Beth Edelson, Carolee Schneeman, and Rachel Rosenthal.

[24] At Fresno, she planned a class that would consist only of women and decided to teach off campus to escape "the presence and hence, the expectations of men.

Fifteen students studied under Chicago at Fresno State College: Dori Atlantis, Susan Boud, Gail Escola, Vanalyne Green, Suzanne Lacy, Cay Lang, Karen LeCocq, Jan Lester, Chris Rush, Judy Schaefer, Henrietta Sparkman, Faith Wilding, Shawnee Wollenman, Nancy Youdelman, and Cheryl Zurilgen.

After Chicago left for Cal Arts, the class at Fresno State College was continued by Rita Yokoi from 1971 to 1973, and then by Joyce Aiken in 1973, until her retirement in 1992.

[nb 1] Chicago's image is included in the iconic 1972 poster Some Living American Women Artists by Mary Beth Edelson.

They wanted to start the year with a large scale collaborative project that involved female artists who spent much of their time talking about their experiences as women.

[32] Chicago thought that female students often approach art-making with an unwillingness to push their limits due to their lack of familiarity with tools and processes, and an inability to see themselves as working people.

"[39] Although art critics felt her work lacked depth and the dinner party was just "vaginas on plates," it was popular and captivated the general public.

[citation needed] In a 1981 interview, Chicago said that the backlash of threats and hateful castigation in reaction to the work brought on the only period of suicide risk she'd ever experienced in her life, characterizing herself as "like a wounded animal".

[40] She stated that she sought refuge from public attention by moving to a small rural community and that friends and acquaintances took on administrative support roles for her, such as opening her mail, while she threw herself into working on Embroidering Our Heritage, the book documenting the project.

[37] Chicago described the piece as revealing a "primordial female self hidden among the recesses of my soul...the birthing woman is part of the dawn of creation.

"[12] 150 needleworkers from the United States, Canada and New Zealand assisted in the project, working on 100 panels, by quilting, macrame, embroidery and other techniques.

Looking at their monumental scale and clarity led me to decide to cast my examination of masculinity in the classical tradition of the heroic nude and to do so in a series of large-scale oil paintings.”[45] The titles of the works such as Crippled by the Need to Control/Blind Individuality, Pissing on Nature, Driving the World to Destruction, In the Shadow of the Handgun, Disfigured by Power, etc., indicate Chicago's focus on male violent behaviour.

I wondered what feelings the male body might be made to express.”[50] In the mid-1980s Chicago's interests "shifted beyond 'issues of female identity' to an exploration of masculine power and powerlessness in the context of the Holocaust.

"[51] Chicago's The Holocaust Project: From Darkness into Light (1985–93)[51] is a collaboration with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, whom she married on New Year's Eve 1985.

[51] Galit Mana of Jewish Renaissance magazine notes, "This shift in focus led Chicago to work on other projects with an emphasis on Jewish tradition", including Voices from the Song of Songs (1997), where Chicago "introduces feminism and female sexuality into her representation of strong biblical female characters.

[60] In an interview with Gloria Steinem in 2018, Chicago described her "goal as an artist" has been “to create images in which the female experience is the path to the universal, as opposed to learning everything through the male gaze.

These skills allowed Chicago to bring fiberglass and metal into her sculpture, and eventually she would become an apprentice under Mim Silinsky to learn the art of porcelain painting, which would be used to create works in The Dinner Party.

Through the Flower also serves as the maintainer of Chicago's works, having handled the storage of The Dinner Party, before it found a permanent home at the Brooklyn Museum.

[71] Judy Chicago became aware of the sexism that was rampant in modern art institutions, museums, and schools while getting her undergraduate and graduate degree at UCLA in the 1960s.

While most teachers based their lessons on technique, visual forms, and color, the foundation for Chicago's teachings were on the content and social significance of the art, especially in feminism.

[80] Several students involved in Judy Chicago's teaching projects established successful careers as artists, including Suzanne Lacy, Faith Wilding, and Nancy Youdelman.

Wo/Manhouse 2022, located in Belen, New Mexico, featured 19 New Mexico-based artists exploring gender roles, identity, family, labor, and more through site-specific artworks in a 1950s-style house.