Gasping Downwind from Judy Chicago’s “Forever de Young”

Last Saturday afternoon, my partner and I happened to have some time to kill in San Francisco and decided to see Judy Chicago’s performance “Forever de Young” at the de Young Museum, where the artist’s retrospective is currently on view. We arrived just after the museum closed and joined the massive crowd that was gathering on the lawn. The festivities began with some people making inaudible remarks through a PA that clearly wasn’t up to the task of broadcasting sound to a crowd this large. Just beyond them, the artist’s pyramidal pyrotechnics rig glistened…