Guerrilla Girls don’t monkey around with discrimination
by Amy Pate

They entered the packed room wearing gorilla masks and tossing bananas into the crowd after a multimedia presentation explained how “a band of gorillas” has been launching attacks against the art world.

Two Guerrilla Girls explained their philosophy and tactics to a crowd of some 300 members of the Vanderbilt and Nashville communities. Their March 16 appearance in Wilson Hall came as part of the “Celebrating the Struggle” lecture series.

Calling themselves the conscience of the art world, the Guerrilla Girls are artist-activists who protest underrepresentation of women and minorities in the art world. To maintain their anonymity, members of the group wear gorilla masks.

“We have a bottomless supply of anger,” said one of the anonymous artists. She was responding to a student who asked what motivated the women’s continued activism despite the slow pace of change in the art world.

The members choose to remain anonymous “to focus on the issues and not on the individuals,” said one of the presenters with the pseudonym “Rosalba Carriera.”

Most members of the group take as pseudonyms the names of dead women artists. “Alma Thomas” and “Rosalba Carriera” appeared at Vanderbilt. Thomas was a black woman artist who lived in Washington, D.C. Carriera was a late 17th to 18th century Italian court painter.

The Guerrilla Girls began putting up posters in the art districts of New York in 1985. The posters highlighted the paucity of female and minority artists shown at galleries and museums.

“We just counted and recorded what we saw,” said “Carriera.” Her first action as a Guerrilla Girl was to plaster the bathrooms of museums with stickers claiming that women artists only earned one-third of what their male counterparts earned.

Eventually, the group’s campaigns targeted all facets of the art world — galleries, museums, artists, collectors and critics have been subject to posters, letter-writing campaigns and protests.

Although the art world thinks it is more advanced than the rest of the country, when it comes to equal opportunity for women and minority artists it is far behind, “Thomas” said. Many of the Guerrilla Girls’ posters aim at deflating this smug self-assurance.

During their appearance, the discussed some of the posters they had used in New York.

One poster, displayed in 1989, proclaims “Bus companies are more enlightened than NYC art galleries.” The poster lists the percentage of women in certain professions in New York. The 16 percent posted by art galleries trails at the back, followed only by truck drivers and welders.

Another poster from 1989 sets its sights on both the art world and critics on the political right.

“Relax, Senator Helms, the Art World Is Your Kind of Place,” read “Thomas,” eliciting laughter from the audience. The poster lists reasons ranging from the the absence of affirmative action programs to the prominence of white males in the field.

In the 1990s, the Guerrilla Girls broadened their approach. In 1990, they produced a poster that asked “If February is Black History Month and March is Women’s History Month, what happens the rest of the year?” Their answer — “Discrimination.”

“What month is this?” asked “Thomas.”

“March!” quipped “Carriera.”

“We’ve had speakers every month!” rejoined Ronnie Steinberg from the audience. Steinberg, a professor of sociology, is one of the series organizers and director of the Women’s Studies program.

For more information about the Guerrilla Girls, visit their Web site at www.guerrillagirls.com .

The Guerrilla Girls’ appearance was sponsored by the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center, the Opportunity Development Center, Students for Women’s Concerns, Women’s Studies, Communication Studies, the Department of Fine Arts, and Housing and Residential Education.