The Guerrilla Girls By Valeria Napoleone Xx And Co Curator Nayia Yiakoumaki

In December 2002, the directors of 18 museums located throughout Europe and the United States issued the Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. The declaration is an attempt, by the directors of major Western museums, to defend against demands for restitution of museum objects by defining themselves as “universal museums” which are of value to all of humanity. This document fails as a convincing defence against restitution claims for several reasons. First, it dismisses circumstances of older acquisitions without considering the ethics or legality of surrounding the acquisition. Second, while it pronounces these museums “universal,” it approaches this from a distinctly Western perspective and perpetuates colonial and imperialist ideas. Finally, it ignores important debates that are occurring between and within scholarly, professional, and activist communities.

I fell in love with methodologies of art history. I felt empowered in that, through my own interpretations, I could attach words and meaning to objects. My study of art history reached a turning point when, in 2012, I took a class entitled Identity in a Post-Identity Art World: Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Trans/Nationality, 1990 to the Present. The course endowed me with another lens with which to examine works and, more importantly, shed light on representations of marginalized identities. As a result, I was introduced to the writings of Judith Butler and Simone de Beauvoir, both seminal theorists who inspired my own analyses. I enjoyed every minute of conducting research and forming arguments to support my claims. Ultimately I was interested in developing my understanding of issues in contemporary art further and sought to accomplish this by engaging with a larger

Aside from the Brooklyn Museum, the only museum I had been to in the last four years would be the Met Breuer. As I was instructed to visit the Diane Arbus exhibit at the Met Breuer, I imagined the same type of scenery any museum would look like; high ceiling, large frames, and a collection of detailed and colorful work. It occurred to my surprise when instead I saw an identical collection of same sized frames, of just people, in what seemed to be black and white. As I took a deeper glance, I noticed almost none of the people photographed were smiling. It appeared that they were candid photos, yet they all looked directly at the camera. Arbus’ photos were drawn to unusual public places and scenery in black and white with some surreal contrast portraits. I noticed the raw images of peculiar people often brought focus on those who may be the outliers of their society; transgender, dwarfs, nudists, circus clowns, and even children. There were various particular themes that struck a chord with me, however, among the many images I came across during my search, I found Arbus’ portraits on transgender people provoke the most emotion and intrigue. The wide variety of each portrait as well as the ways she chose to portray them told a story of both lives and culture within her lifetime. Being particularly interested on transgender people, I was captivated with the complexities of her work and the way that she transcended so many boundaries which constantly had me question the theme she

In the lecture titled “Dismantling Injustice”, the speaker talked about the relationship between risk and empathy, in that artists take incredible risks by putting themselves out there, yet they need to understand someone else’s experiences and empathize with those who hold different opinions than them. In order to explain the risks they take, the speaker gave many examples of artists working to fight against injustice. One example was the Guerrilla Girls: a sarcastic group that aimed to bring awareness to social injustices such as sexism and racism. In order to do this, this group of women wore gorilla masks around New York City, posting stickers on art galleries that didn’t feature a high amount of female artists, and creating billboards with facts on how

Major Claim: In the Second Wave of Feminism, a group of feminist artists enacted the group entitled the "Guerrilla Girls". In addition, this group of activists fight against the discrimination amidst the world of art by creating various medias of the Arts through literature, studio art, advertisement, public and public display. This is to counteract their oppressors within the field of art. In Anne Teresa Demo's Essay "The Guerrilla Girls' Comic Politics of Subversion", she analyzes the rhetorical approaches the association utilizes in aid towards resistance.

Recalling my inability to understand art, you can just imagine how much fun I had in the museum. When I walked into the little area I was immediately stopped by a collection of commemorative plates, each with names of famous civil rights activists on them. The plates looked very elegant, but I couldn’t figure out why the artist would want to create them. “Irony”, I thought, “it must be ironic somehow. Artists love irony – but how is this ironic?” Maybe because the names were in black on white plates? Maybe because they didn’t lead extravagant lifestyles but yet were commemorated on extravagant plates? Or maybe that their names, and all that they have stood for, have been reduced to a cheap souvenir-like object, that may or may not be available at the gift shop. I decided to shake off all the thoughts that were running through my head when I saw a giant sign that described the purpose of the exhibit, and what Brown v Board meant. Beneath it I found a pamphlet describing each work. “Spectacular”, I thought. “Now this is my kind of art museum – one with answers”.

What the media fails to accurately portray is that feminists strive to promote equality for both women and men. Utilizing feminism as their secret weapon to add diversity to the overly male punk scene, the riot grrrls managed to successfully promote women’s rights with politically charged tunes that empowered women to make a change.

The Guerrilla Girls are a feminist group whose mission is to make the public better aware of the sexism that women face in our culture and in particular the many challenges they endure as artists. The first piece that I chose is titled “The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist”. This poster addresses some of the discriminatory conditions women contend within the art world. It is written with heavy sarcasm to emphasize the Guerrilla Girls’ very deep frustration with sexism. The “advantages” that they list are ways in which women are not burdened with having to succeed, but of course in reality these are actually barriers women must overcome to have the same opportunities as men. For example, one of the points that they make is that women are not expected to preform as well as men in our culture. They write that women do not have to “undergo the embarrassment of being called a genius”. In other points, they sarcastically address the difficulties that women face in an art world that is populated almost entirely with men and having to choose between motherhood and a career. Another advantage they list is: “working without the pressure of success”. I think this best captures the Guerrilla Girls overall sentiment; that basically women are seen as inferior.

According to Guerrilla Girls website, “We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders…. We also do projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices right on their own walls, including our 2015 stealth projection about income inequality and the super-rich hijacking art on the facade of the Whitney Museum in New York” (Guerrilla Girls). I perceive the Guerrilla Girls movement to be fierce and funny, but yet impressive, and effectively as a whole. Their messages allowed them to have

Since the 19th century and first-wave feminism, to the 21st century and post-modern feminism; women have used art as a method of expression and activism. Art has allowed women everywhere to speak out against political and social inequalities and impact history through an indubitable visual language. Hannah Wilke and Jessica Ledwich are two visual artists – decades apart from each other – that explore and challenge the standards set up against women.

This feminist art movement paved the way for numerous different art styles to emerge and gave women a more prominent stance within the art world. However during the 1980’s there was another shift and art dealers began showcasing more male artists again in order to revive the commercial economy of art, which marginalized female artists. This caused a new wave of feminism in art, with the emergence of the Guerilla Girls in New York and then eventually the Houston Gorilla Girls. The HGG wanted to intimidate the art galleries around Houston into exhibiting more female artists. They wanted to make them uncomfortable and show them something they probably hadn’t considered, that people do care about the representation of women and that these women in Gorilla masks would not stop until they achieved that fair representation. As stated previously, the guerilla girls not only wore the gorilla masks for the protection of their identity but also to give a feeling of unity and keep the galleries aloof to their activities while they were trying to figure out who was behind the gorilla masks. They wanted to be a faceless organization that sought to not only represents their own interests but the interests of women artists and artists of color that were not being treated as respected members within the art community. They wanted to be representative of the collective ideals and spirit of women all over the world and not just as their individual personalities. They wanted to let the world know that there was a sever lack of female representation and there needed to be a collective movement to change this. They placed blame on the art community as a whole often showcasing signs that read, “You are responsible” in bright neon colors, as not to be

After reading a book on various feminist philosophies, I evaluated Annie Liebovitz's book and collection of photographs entitled Women according to my interpretation of feminist philosophy, then used this aesthetic impression to evaluate the efficacy of feminist theories as they apply toward evaluating and understanding art.

The Guerrilla Girls speak about sexism in art galleries and the non appreciation of women 's art in the most prestigious galleries of New York. “a very big problem is the fact women don 't collect. ... Men buy the art and call the shots museums. Until women support women and collect each things will never change" (Withers 287). Women artists new to the art world were not accepted, men artist bought their art to present as their own. This way women artist do not get the chance to be recognized for their talent. Making the assumption women are only valued as the model but cannot aspire to be artists and create exceptional work as men would. This is of importance because only 1% or none of the art presented was of women artists. “not only in their appeals to principles of equality, but also, say, in their gesture of adopting the names of deceased female artists as aliases, a gambit tacitly

Positioned alongside Central Park within the heart of New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the largest and most influential art museums in the world. The Met houses an extensive collection of curated works that spans throughout various time periods and different cultures. The context of museums, especially one as influential as the Met, inherently predisposes its visitors to a set of understandings that subtly influence how they interpret and ultimately construct meanings about each individual object within a museum. By analyzing two separate works on exhibit at the Met, I will pose the argument that museums offer a unique expression of a world view that is dictated through every element of its construction.

The story of these girls is just a voice for millions of girls in the world who are facing problems like poverty, sexual assault, human trafficking and child marriage.