Guerrilla Girls

Starred review from July 13, 2020
Feminist activist artists group Guerrilla Girls documents its campaigns exposing gender and ethnic bias and corruption in arts and politics in this timely and provocative illustrated history. As stated in the introduction: “No longer can anyone claim that the history of art and culture can be written without including all the diverse voices of that culture.” Heavily illustrated with photographs, posters, and flyers, the book traces the history of the group of anonymous artists, formed in 1985—and often appearing in public in gorilla masks—to reveal the art world’s sexual bias in exhibiting and promoting artists. Their 1989 billboard pointed out at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art that “less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” In 1990, they published a code of ethics that condemned bias in art selection (“A Curator shalt not exhibit an Artist... with whom he/she has had a sexual relationship”). In the 1990s, they revealed how the art world “tokenizes” artists (“at openings and parties, the only other people of color are serving drinks”), and in the early 2000s unveiled an anatomically correct Oscar statue (“He’s white & male, just like the guys who win!”). Little has changed, the group believes, as evidenced by their 2019 poster attacking New York’s Museum of Modern Art for naming galleries after its board members who had dealings with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. This thought-provoking, empowering work will inspire fellow artists and forward thinkers alike.