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Meet the Guerrilla Girls

Profile Sept. 22, 2020
A printed page reads: You're seeing less than half the picture without the vision of women artists and artists of color. Please send $ and comments to Guerilla Girls conscience of the art world.
Alan D. and Marsha W. Bramowitz Contemporary Print Acquisition Fund.
“Unless all the voices in our culture are in the history of art, it’s not a history of art, it’s a history of power.” —Frida Kahlo, member of Guerrilla Girls
Frida Kahlo, Meet the Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls is a group of feminist activist artists—each with a pseudonym referring to a woman artist no longer living—whose collaborative work exposes gender and racial gaps in the art world. They launched their practice in 1985 to protest the exhibition An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Advertised as an accurate survey of the most significant contemporary artists of the mid-1980s, the show featured 148 men, 13 women, and no female artists of color.

Scroll down to dig into the humor, data, and flashy graphics of the group’s various posters. Although some posters date to more than thirty years ago, their purpose of calling out injustices, undermining the mainstream, and promoting intersectional feminism remains relevant.

Visit the museum to see these works currently on view in our Scaife galleries.

Print with a photo of a nude woman reclining and wearing a guerrilla mask with the words: Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.
© Guerrilla Girls
A print page reading Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz. Q. If February is Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month, what happens the rest of the year? A. Discrimination.
Guerrilla Girls; You’re seeing less than half the picture, 1989; Carnegie Museum of Art: Alan D. and Marsha W. Bramowitz Contemporary Print Acquisition Fund.
Sheet of paper with rose drawn at the top and handwritten text saying Dearest Art Collector, It has come to our attention that your collection, like most, does not contain enough art by women. We know that you feel terrible about this and will rectify the situation immediately. All our love, Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls; Dearest Art Collector, 1986; Carnegie Museum of Art:
A printed piece of paper with bullet points reading National Health Care. An End to Poverty and Homelessness. No More Discrimination. A Cure for AIDS. Childcare and Education for Everyone. Reproductive Rights for All Women. A Safe Environment. An Alternative Energy Policy. These words are all covered by a big red stamp saying Missing in Action.
© Guerrilla Girls