Guerrilla Girls
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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""Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" (1989) was an awareness campaign by the American feminist group the Guerrilla Girls; who, after counting all male artists, female artists, male nudes and female nudes at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, condemned the limited number of female artists found in that institute."--Sholem Stein When Racism and Sexism are No Longer Fashionable, What Will Your Art Collection Be Worth? |
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The Guerrilla Girls are a group of American feminist artists established in New York City in 1985, known for using guerrilla art to promote women and people of color in the arts. Their first work was putting up posters on the streets of New York decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries and museums. Over the years they expanded their activism to examine Hollywood and the film industry, popular culture, gender stereotyping and corruption in the artworld. Their best-known work is Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?.
They now maintain a website, guerrillagirls.com, they write books and create new posters and print projects and they travel the world giving presentations and showing small and large scale versions of their work. They have recently created new projects about the cultural situation of specific places and events, like The Venice Biennale of Art, the status of women artists in Turkey and the representation of women artists in national museums on the Mall in Washington DC.
The Guerrilla Girls invented a unique combination of content, text, and snappy graphics that present feminist viewpoints in an outrageous and humorous manner. The intention is that many viewers who initially disagree with GG positions get drawn in by their comic hook, think about the issues and often change their minds. Guerrilla Girls want to rehabilitate the “f” word (feminism) so that people who believe in the tenets of feminism (equal opportunity, an end to gender based discrimination, equal access to education, reproductive rights education and human rights for women everywhere) will also want to call themselves feminists.
One of their most famous posters was plastered across New York City buses in 1989. Its headline read, "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?" The Guerrilla Girls conducted a "weenie count" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, counting naked males and naked females in the artworks as well as numbers of female artists in the collection. Less than 5% of the artists in the Met's modern art sections were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. Their design was rejected by The Public Art Fund as a billboard so the Guerrilla girls ran it as an ad in the public buses in New York City. This poster has been reproduced in many, many textbooks on all subjects from geography to art history to women’s studies. The GGs went back in 2005 to do a recount and found that there are now fewer women artists shown at the Met, but more naked males in the artworks.
Members of the original group always wear gorilla masks when appearing as Guerrilla Girls and often, but not always, miniskirts and fishnet stockings, and will assume the names of deceased famous female artists. They proclaim that no one knows their identities, except for some of their mothers and/or partners. They never reveal the number of members of the group, implying that there are many Guerrilla Girls, or at least Guerrilla Girl supporters, all over the world. In 2001 two groups broke away and formed Guerrilla Girls Broadband, focused on internet and work issues, and Guerrilla Girls on Tour, a theatre troupe.
It has been said said that Guerrilla Girls' work on behalf of marginalized female artists and artists of color within the art world serves the needs of only a handful of privileged artists, but the GG cause and work have been taken up by women’s groups everywhere from Brazil to India, Mexico, Europe, Cyprus, Bosnia and Serbia. Their books, The Guerrilla Girls Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art, Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers, The Guerrilla Girls Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes and The Guerrilla Girls Art Museum Activity Book are popular among political activists and have become textbooks in women’s studies, cultural studies and political science classes.
Other critics assert that their activities ignore the larger trend of misogyny and patriarchy in society, focusing too narrowly on the self-interested pursuit of greater marketability and recognition of female artists.[citation needed] To this, the Guerrilla Girls point to the fact that more than a third of their posters and campaigns have addressed larger societal issues including violence against women, racial inequality, war, reproductive choice, and what they consider to be misguided political policies.
