Inviting Help for ‘Dinner Party’

Designer Holly Harp and architect Elyse Grinstein held a ‘70s-style fund-and-consciousness-raiser for “The Dinner Party,” the sculptural construction created by feminist artist Judy Chicago in the She Decade.

Begun in 1973, the work is a vast triangular table with place settings--painted porcelain plates on hand-stitched runners--for 39 outstanding women ranging from Virginia Wolfe to Queen Elizabeth.

“The Dinner Party” is in a Northern California warehouse. For the last 10 years, it has been exhibited around the world, and Chicago said that “no matter where it went, people stood in line, people cried, people said it changed their lives.” Nevertheless, no museum has offered it space for permanent display.

The 250 guests attending Sunday’s event at the new Chaya Venice restaurant, set to officially open at the end of the month, donated $15,000 (including $500 from Steve Martin) to help pay for storage and maintenance. The money goes to the nonprofit Through the Flower Foundation, which was founded in the late 1970s to “provide administrative support for ‘The Dinner Party.’ ”

Among those attending were artists Joe Goode, Ann Thornycroft, Sandy Sussman and Sherie Scheer; designer Harriet Selwyn; producer Carole Isenberg; actor Howard Hesseman; Chaya Venice owners Riku Suzuki and Yuji Tsunoda, and the Lannan Foundation’s Ann and Patrick Lannan.

After a showing of Harp’s spring collection sponsored by the Alley shop, people on their way home took a look at another piece of art that’s creating controversy in a ‘90s way: the Jonathan Borofsky sculpture outside the building at Main Street and Rose Avenue portraying a colossal tutued ballerina with a man’s clown face.