Art & Creativity Quote by Judy Chicago

Ambition is usually coded as arrogance when a woman says it out loud. Judy Chicago refuses the coy version. “I set my sights” reads like a mission briefing, not an artist’s diary: deliberate, strategic, almost militarily clear. The phrasing also dodges the romantic myth that art simply “happens” to geniuses. Chicago frames becoming as an act of will, and the target isn’t fame or even mastery, but “a contribution to art history” - the gatekept record of what counts.

That last clause is the pressure point. Art history isn’t neutral; it’s an institution built by museums, critics, and classrooms that have historically treated women as muses, amateurs, or footnotes. Chicago’s intent is to force an entry into that archive and, more radically, to change its contents. The subtext: if the canon won’t expand on its own, it has to be confronted, edited, and re-authored.

Context sharpens the stakes. Chicago’s career rises alongside second-wave feminism and the conceptual turn in art, when the definition of “serious” work was already being contested. Her projects (especially The Dinner Party) operate like cultural infrastructure: not just objects to admire, but arguments about whose stories deserve permanence. So the line isn’t mere self-belief; it’s a demand for historical visibility. She’s naming the scoreboard, then insisting she has every right to play - and to rewrite the rules while she’s at it.