Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?
Artist
Guerilla Girls
United States, founded 1985
Date2005
MediumOffset Lithograph
Dimensions11 x 24 in. (27.9 x 61 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.7829
DescriptionThis now-iconic poster is the work of the New York-based Guerilla Girls, who describe themselves as “anonymous artist activists who use disruptive headlines, outrageous visuals and killer statistics to expose gender and ethnic bias and corruption in art, film, politics, and pop culture.” The reclining nude woman here wears the scary gorilla mask used by the group’s members to conceal their identities at public events and in interviews. The Guerilla Girls had begun to make interventionist Street Art in New York City in 1985, but the first version of this poster, issued in 1989, effectively launched their international reputation. It was originally commissioned as a billboard by the Public Art Fund in New York; the group went to the Met to compare the number of modern works by women artists on display with the number of female nudes in the works themselves. The statistics were dispiriting, revealing just 5 percent of women artists and 85 percent of nudes. The recounts in 2005, represented in this version of the poster, and again in 2012, were hardly more encouraging. In any case, the Public Art Fund rejected the original version, claiming it wasn’t ‘clear’ enough, so instead the Guerilla Girls ran it as an ad on New York buses. The poster itself is now held in major art collections around the world.On View
Not on view
