Guerrilla Girls

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The Guerrilla Girls are a group of feminist artists. The group was established in New York City in 1984 and is known for using guerrilla tactics (especially guerrilla art) to promote women, and soon thereafter, minorities, in the arts. Their traditional tactics included putting up posters decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries, particularly those in New York.

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?" According to the Guerrilla Girls, they conducted what they have deemed a "weenie count" at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and found that less than 5% of the artists in the Met's Modern Art sections were female, but 85% of the nudes were female. This prompted the poster, which was eventually removed from city buses in New York after their lease was cancelled, with the bus company citing obscenity.

Members of the original group always wear gorilla masks and often, but not always, miniskirts and fishnet stockings while appearing as Guerrilla Girls. They proclaim that no one, except for some of their mothers and/or partners, knows their identities. They also refuse to state how many Girls there are in total. Their membership is unknown, but has now grown to include members worldwide, including both British and French sectors.

The Guerilla Girls today do not exist in their original form. What they refer to as the "Banana Split" divided them into the three groups that all now operate under the title Guerilla Girls. One group, The Guerrilla Girls on Tour, is theatrical and tours around the United States, raising awareness of the deficit of female representation within the theatrical world. There is also a visual arts group, and a web-based group as well.

Critics of the group accuse them of hypocritical self-interest masquerading as social activism. Although the GG purport to campaign on behalf of marginalized female artists, goes the criticism, the scope and purpose of the Guerilla Girls' activities serve the economic needs of a handful of privileged, well-educated artists. While the group's criticisms of the art world are well-founded and not without merit, 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. To this, the Guerilla 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 misguided Republican policies.