Middle School
Guerrilla
Art for the Social Conscience
“The art world needs to
examine itself, to be more
self-critical. Every profession
needs a conscience!”
Guerrilla Girl, GG1
Pam Stephens
The next time you walk
through the local art
museum or open an art
history book, make a
tally sheet of the names of the art-
ists represented. Then sort the art-
ists by gender and ethnicity. What
is the ratio of art created by women
to that created by men? What is the
ratio of Eurocentric art to non-
Eurocentric art? It was an experi-
ence like this that prompted the
formation of the Guerrilla Girls,
a group of anonymous female art-
ists who have adopted the names of
famous dead women and work tire-
lessly to promote equality through-
out the world.
169 artists; moreover, few artists
of color were represented. Soon the
founding members were question-
ing how this could be, who was
responsible, and what could be done
about it.
Background
In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened An
International Survey of Painting
and Sculpture, an exhibition that
showed the most significant art in
the world at the time. The founding
members of the Guerrilla Girls visited the exhibition. Their art tally
indicated that only thirteen women
were represented among the show’s
It seemed that nobody would
take the blame. Much like children
in a disruptive classroom, artists
blamed dealers who then blamed
collectors who in turn blamed critics and so on. It was at this moment
