Feature Photo: Guerrilla Girls
December 11, 2015
Two “broads” of Guerrilla Girls Broadband, a sister organization to the group of women known as Guerrilla Girls, address an audience of largely Studio Art and Art History majors and student activists at a talk in Wilder Hall on Tuesday. Founded in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls’ goal has always been to confront sexism and racism in art, politics and pop culture and to serve as the “conscience of the art world.” The group likens its activism to guerilla warfare. Initially, the members comprised anonymous artists and women with ties to the art world who adopted the names of deceased female artists and wore gorilla masks to conceal their true identities. The organization has sent fake awards to sexist curators and gallery owners, analyzed a year’s work of art journalism in The New York Times and even sent a letter from an imaginary graduate student to uncover incriminating information from art institutions, such as statistics on unbalanced gender representation of the performers they host. They are perhaps most notable for the iconic fact-filled posters and stickers they have placed in New York museum bathrooms and gift shops.
