[1] Before its completion, the critic and curator Lawrence Alloway recognized its potential to be "a notable contribution to the long-awaited legible iconography of women in political terms.
[8] Each "role model" was selected and painted by a different artist, which allowed the participants to retain their individual styles:[5][9] Each of the monumental figures occupies a nine-by-five-foot canvas, arranged in a circle, into which viewers are invited to enter.
[4] A tent-like fabric enclosure, designed by Maureen Connor in 1976, was meant to create an intimate space approximately 25 feet in diameter.
[1][12][13] The Sister Chapel was eventually revived by Andrew Hottle, a professor of art history at Rowan University, whose research for a book about the installation led him to reunite the component works.
[11][14][15][16] In 2016, for the first time in 37 years, The Sister Chapel was exhibited in its entirety at the Rowan University Art Gallery in Glassboro, New Jersey.
[14] In The Philadelphia Inquirer, the art critic Edith Newhall wrote that "Hottle has produced something of an art-world miracle" by finding and reuniting the paintings.