Tel Aviv exhibits pose question, ‘What if women ruled the world?’

The work and ideas of American Jewish feminist artist Judy Chicago, 86, are featured in two collaborative Tel Aviv exhibits — one at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and a more extensive one at the Nassima Landau Art Foundation.

Titled “Judy Chicago: What If Women Ruled the World?” the Nassima Landau show has curators Steve Nassima, Daria Alufi and Levi Frombaum surveying Chicago’s work from the last 60 years, including drawings, textile pieces from her installation “The Dinner Party,” and later works addressing her Jewish identity.

The Tel Aviv Museum hosts two pieces, including one featuring activist artist Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the protest group Pussy Riot. One wall features a massive quilt, part of Chicago’s continuing textile art, while the other wall has a 2022 video made by Chicago that includes Tolokonnikova, one of the first participants. Both exhibits opened September 18.

All the works at Nassima Landau and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art are on loan from a private collection, without active participation from Chicago herself.

Chicago is an American feminist artist and art educator known for her installations about birth and creation, as well as later works examining her Jewish heritage.

Although recognized as an artist since the 1970s, she spent much of her career on the margins of the international art world. In recent years, however, her work has gained renewed global attention, particularly with her repeated quest for an answer to the question of how the world would look if it were ruled by women.

The Tel Aviv exhibits are a vibrant, active introduction to Chicago, who was born Cohen and changed her name in adulthood to the city of her birth, to reflect her personality and independent nature.

Over five years, Chicago collaborated with the international fashion house Dior, doing numerous projects such as “The Female Divine,” staged behind the Rodin Museum in Paris, and involving the realization of Chicago’s long-held concept for a monumental goddess figure.

The Nassima Landau Art Foundation space offers several rooms of Chicago’s work, opening with Chicago’s printmaking, including works from the 1960s to the present.

The central portion of the exhibit offers a longer gaze at Chicago’s installation “The Dinner Party,” permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

The Nassima version shows a video and original sketches of the triangular dinner table with 39 place settings, each dedicated to real and imagined women.

Another portion of the Nassima Landau exhibit focuses on Chicago’s personal timeline, her birth, childhood in Chicago, marriages and professional achievements.

The last room focuses on her works channeling Jewish values, shown in textiles embroidered with quotations in Hebrew, English and Arabic, and  with a call to humanity to summon political and social change.

A short ride away at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is the similarly titled exhibition and project “Judy Chicago: What If Women Ruled the World?”

It includes a quilt woven from thousands of voices answering the question: What if women ruled the world?

The quilt has made its way through the United States, Mexico, Argentina, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, and is now debuting in the Middle East. The museum exhibit includes an interactive booth for viewers to respond to questions and take part in the work’s latest chapter.

Women featured on the quilt and in the video have added their own sentiments, saying the world would be more gracious and kind, there wouldn’t be such massive social media platforms run by supposed tech geniuses, other people would have a voice, there would be more honest jobs, the world would be more sincere, along with other responses.

A platform related to the work offers the opportunity for anyone to read, respond to, or share images related to one of the questions posed by Tolokonnikova and Chicago, available at this link:

During the opening evening event for the museum portion of the exhibit, a dozen Israelis —men and women —spoke for several minutes each about their answers to the question.

The speakers included Tel Aviv Museum of Art director Tania Coen-Uzzieli, former Knesset member Miki Haimovich, teachers, activists, comedians, and a female police officer.

Judy Chicago’s artworks will remain in Nassima Landau through January 30, 2026, and can be seen with free entry to the public.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art works will remain in the first gallery of the Herta and Paul Amir Building through December 27 and can be seen with tickets purchased for the museum.

Nassima Landau Art Foundation, 55 Ahad Ha’am Street, Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 27 Sderot Shaul Hamelech, Tel Aviv.