ABSTRACT
Despite its initial critical success and historical significance as a consummate feminist collaboration, The Sister Chapel has not been seen in its entirety since December 1978, when it was exhibited at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In the intervening years, a number of situations directly affected The Sister Chapel and its constituent paintings. In 1982, a terrible fire in Cynthia Mailman's studio destroyed most of her early work and approximately a dozen of her later paintings. With exhibitions of The Sister Chapel suspended indefinitely, Maureen Connor eventually discarded the maquette for the pavilion; however, the five miniatures that once embellished it were preserved by Sylvia Sleigh. The possibility of resurrecting The Sister Chapel was actually raised toward the end of 1992, when the recently established National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, contacted the artists to propose the donation of their paintings to the institution's permanent collection.
