Guerrilla Girls records, 1979-2003

View only results with digital items
Printable guide [HTML]

Summary

Creators:
Guerrilla Girls (Group of artists)
Abstract:
Guerrilla Girls records document the activities of the feminist art group, comprising a complete set of posters, mass mailings, form letters, and other graphic materials, along with internal group memoranda, letters from fans, business correspondence, and audiovisual materials.
Extent:
96 Linear Feet (96 boxes, 20 flat files, 3 elephant folios, 1 roll)
Language:
English .
Preferred citation:

Guerrilla Girls records, 1979-2003, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2008.M.14.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2008m14

Background

Scope and content:

Guerrilla Girls records document the activities of the feminist art group, comprising a complete set of posters, mass mailings, form letters, and other graphic materials, showing the evolution of their work and their notable expansion of focus from the art world to George Bush-era politics to New York theater. Series I documents their notorious posters in chronological order. Series II. Assorted graphic works, shows their assiduous pursuit of justice through mass and individual mailings about and to various art world figures, along with the private replies they often received. This series also provides a glimpse into their collective compositional process, with drafts of posters and comments on them, along with source material in the form of clippings and statistical reports. Series III concerns books and serials they created.

Series IV. Photographs, V. Exhibitions, and VI. Lectures and Performances, document the Guerrilla Girls' non-graphic activity, though the extensive list of venues is not complete. Of particular interest is Series VIII. Administration files, which includes internal group memoranda, revealing the sometimes emotional conflicts between members, and the challenges of non-hierarchical collective self-management. Also included are letters from fans, business correspondence that offers insight into donors and sponsors, and comprehensive press clippings.

Biographical / historical:

The Guerrilla Girls formed in 1985 as an anonymous group determined to fight sexism in the art world. Their initial strategy was to put up protest posters during the night in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan. What residents saw in the morning were statistics printed in black on white paper, and the numbers spoke for themselves: that only one woman had had a solo exhibition in a New York Museum in the previous year; that fewer than 10% of artists shown in top galleries were women; that art magazines devoted less than 25% of coverage to women artists. Confronting the art world with its patent injustice, the posters caused a sensation.

The Guerrilla Girls developed their expose over the next two decades, systematically attacking the arbiters of taste in the art world, including gallerists, critics, curators, collectors, editors, and even prominent male artists who failed to support their campaign. To the stark presentation of fact they added wit, using, for example, the format of an elementary school report card to grade and comment on the galleries' performance with regard to women artists, or listing the disadvantages of being a woman artist as advantages. It was frequently this mock reversal of values that was at the core of their effective humor, even when they moved into the broader political arena to target the Bush-era censorship campaigns, with messages such as, "Relax, Senator Helms, the art world is your kind of place."

The Guerrilla Girls have given lectures and performances dressed as gorillas to pursue the pun on their name, conceal their identities, and emphasize the primal intelligence and strength of their political position. Instead of using their given names, they took the names of women artists from the past as pseudonyms. They have also curated two major exhibitions. In 1985, their Palladium show exhibited women artists. In 1987, in protest against the Whitney Biennial's selection of artwork, they curated a counter exhibition, Guerrilla Girls Review the Whitney, in which they revealed the corporate ties of the institution. Over the years, they have also produced mass mailings that attacked reviewers or gallerists with more specificity than a poster allowed; books, including Confessions of the Guerrilla Girls (1995) and The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western Art (1998); the journal Hot Flashes (1990); and various toys, cards, banners, and other ephemera, often derived from the poster concepts.

Acquisition information:
Acquired in 2008.
Processing information:

Initial processing by Vladimira Stefura in 2008. Further processing and cataloging by Annette Leddy in 2009. Redaction and conservation by Jan Bender. Object conservation by Albrecht Gumlich. Arrangement is based on the Guerrilla Girls' original filing system for their poster projects. Every effort has been made to redact the names of individual artist members of the group, unless they gave permission to reveal their names.

Arrangement:

Arranged in ten series: Series I. Poster projects, 1985-1995; Series II. Assorted graphic works, 1980-1999; Series III. Publications, 1986-1995; Series IV. Photographs, 1987-1997; Series V. Exhibitions, 1981-2003; Series VI. Lectures and Performances, 1985-2002; Series VII. Objects, undated; Series VIII. Administration files, 1985-2002; Series IX. Other groups and institutions, 1979-2003; Series X. Miscellaneous, 1985-2002.

Physical location:
Request access to the physical materials described in this inventory through the catalog record for this collection. Click here for the access policy.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for use by qualified researchers except for Box 96 Redactions and the photographic material in boxes 10 and 11 which are restricted and sealed.

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Guerrilla Girls records, 1979-2003, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 2008.M.14.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2008m14

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
Website