The Guerrilla Girls‘ work might never be done. The activist group — which is featured in the film !Women Art Revolution — began in the 1980s after observing that an exhibit intended to highlight all of the major contemporary artworks actually excluded women; 13 of the 169 artists in this exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York were women. In 2007 — two decades after the Guerrilla Girls began their work — they created a poster which counters the commonly held belief that everything is copacetic today. On it are the names of several major museums which, at the time, favored work by male and white artists. The National Gallery of Art was described as displaying work by men 98% of the time, and work by white artists 99.9% of the time!
!Women Art Revolution provides footage of female artists since the 1960s.
The film opens this Friday at Real Art Ways and runs through June 30th.
The trailer includes images that might be NSFW:
Richard
I will never forget my first year in college (1966). The art history book that everyone used was Janson’s History of Art. Well imagine my suprise when opening the book that no women were included. I asked the professor about it and he said not to worry about that as we wouldn’t get that far into the history of art before the end of the year. (I really don’t know what he meant by that as there has been women artists through-out history.) In fact there is a long herstory of artists, a herstory that it would do all of us well to study and celebrate. Begin by taking a tour of the Wadsworth, check it out and ask your questions like there is no tomorrow.
It was wonderful to watch the trailer of WAR as many of the artists in the movie are artists that I have long respected and whose work has had a powerful influence on myself and many others. So many powerful women artists have fallen or have been pushed through the cracks, artists that so many have forgotten just in my generation alone.
A big thanks Kerri for posting about this and please encourage everyone you know to go to see the film.
Kerri Provost
I have been excited about this film since I learned a few months ago that it would be coming to Real Art Ways. Last semester I taught a Gender Studies course, and some of the students who are involved in the arts world (maybe majoring, maybe just interested) seemed to think that the Guerilla Girls’ message was just as fresh in 2011 as it was over two decades ago.
Thanks for sharing about your art class. I always wondered the same in history classes. Never bought that Betsy Ross was the only female worth learning about.
Richard
The Girl’s message indeed is still fresh. What will it take to beat down those doors? One thing we can’t do is ever entertain the idea of, “been there done that.” Or because an artist is a male and famous that we have to hang 3 or 4 examples of his art as the Wadsworth has done with Warhol. When I went into the old Matrix space early June I couldn’t help but think where are the powerful women artist’s work that I know the Wadsworth has in their collection and why isn’t their art on the walls?
Isn’t it up to each of us who see this to start where we stand and keep pushing. This problem is real and not just a movie.
The push down continues because we allow those who have convinced folks that they “Know” best to keep presenting only a very small part of the whole of art.
Richard
We did a survey today at the Wadsworth. Out of 285 works of art on display only 22 were by women. So is 1 out of 8 bad or what?
So the question would be, Are women artists any better off with a woman as the director?
To begin to correct this our recommendations would be: Bring out Louise Lawler’s “Birdcalls” and play it through out the museum. Bring out Peggy Diggs work, “Objects of Abuse” and remove one of the Warhols. Start an educational program on the abuse of women not only in the domestic but also by institutions such as this art museum. Then sit down and do a honest survey of why the Wadsworth acts the way it does with its collection.