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The Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls formed in New York City in the mid 1980s.The Guerrilla Girls focused their performances, protests, installations, and exhibits on highlighting the lack of representation of women and people of color within the art world. Most notably, The Guerrilla Girls donned gorilla masks and costumes during protest in order to maintain anonymity, and to make their work more about the issues rather than each member’s own identity.

After protesting the lack of diversity at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls expanded their work into prints, billboards, public commissions, and, indoor exhibitions. This also came with their work focusing on a wider array of issues such as the wage gap, tokenism, and funding for the arts. The public performances of the Guerrilla Girls in the early days took the form of protest, by wearing their gorilla masks and conducting "weenie counts" in museums, where the members would count he male to female work and subject ratios. Most notably in 1989 they found that The Met's public collections only had 5% of their works produced by women, while 85% of the works including nudity focused on a nude female.

The Guerrilla Girls have been met with criticism and backlash. While they focus on the issue of diversity, it has been said that the majority of the members are white. Former member, Alma Thomas have noted the lack of effort in understanding the challenges faced by artists of color by other members. The Guerrilla Girls have also been accused of “selling out,” having their works shown at the same hegemonic establishments that they protested in the past.