page_title: Guerrilla Girls
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Guerrilla Girls / History
caption_attribution_description: A photo of someone dressed as a Guerrilla Girl.
context_page_description: Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within the greater arts community. The group employs culture jamming in the form of posters, books, billboards, and public appearances to expose discrimination and corruption. To remain anonymous, members don gorilla masks and use pseudonyms that refer to deceased female artists. According to GG1, identities are concealed because issues matter more than individual identities, "[M]ainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work."
context_section_description: During the height of the contemporary art movement in the 20th century, many distinguished galleries lacked appropriate representation of female artists and curators. These galleries were often privately funded by elites, predominately white males, meaning that museums are longer documenting art, but power structures. By the mid 1960s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York had a predominantly male board of directors. This correlates to the disparity of female artists on display while art depicting the female form was abundant. Then in 1985, a group was formed to bring light to these disparities in the sexist art world.
  
  In the spring of 1985, seven women launched the Guerrilla Girls in response to the Museum of Modern Art's exhibition "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture" [1984), whose roster of 165 artists included only 13 women. Inaugurating MoMA's newly renovated and expanded building, this exhibition claimed to survey that era's most important painters and sculptors from 17 countries. The proportion of artists of color was even smaller, and none of them were women. 
  A comment by the show's curator, Kynaston McShine, further highlights that era's explicit art world gender bias: "Kynaston McShine gave interviews saying that any artist who wasn't in the show should rethink his career."  In reaction to the exhibition and McShine's overt bias, they protested in front of MoMA. Thus, the Guerrilla Girls were born.
  When the protests yielded little success, the Guerrilla Girls wheat-pasted posters throughout downtown Manhattan, particularly in the SoHo and East Village neighborhoods.
  Soon after, the group expanded their focus to include racism in the art world, attracting artists of color. They also took on projects outside of New York, enabling them to address sexism and racism nationally and internationally. Though the art world has remained the group's main focus, the Guerrilla Girls' agenda has included sexism and racism in films, mass and popular culture, and politics. Tokenism also represents a major group concern.
  During its first years, the Guerrilla Girls conducted "weenie counts," such that members visited institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and counted artworks' male-to-female subject ratios. Data gathered from the Met's public collections in 1989 showed that women artists had produced less than 5% of the works in the Modern Art Department, while 85% of the nudes were female.
  Early organizing was based around meetings, during which members evaluated statistical data gathered regarding gender inequality within the New York City's art scene. The Guerrilla Girls also worked closely with artists, encouraging them to speak to those within the community to bridge the gender gap where they perceived it.
  When asked about the masks, the girls answer "We were Guerrillas before we were Gorillas. From the beginning the press wanted publicity photos. We needed a disguise. No one remembers, for sure, how we got our fur, but one story is that at an early meeting, an original girl, a bad speller, wrote 'Gorilla' instead of 'Guerrilla.' It was an enlightened mistake. It gave us our 'mask-ulinity.'" In an interview with New York Times the Guerrilla Girls were quoted, "Anonymous free speech is protected by the Constitution. You'd be surprised what comes out of your mouth when you wear a mask."
  Since 1985, the Guerrilla Girls have worked for an increased awareness of sexism and greater accountability on the part of curators, art dealers, collectors and critics. The group is credited, above all, with sparking dialogue, and bringing national and international attention to issues of sexism and racism within the arts.
caption: Guerrilla Girls wear gorilla masks whenever making public appearances.
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