Guerrilla Girls: 40 Years Ago
Upcoming: Spring 2026
Forty years ago, in response to the exhibition An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in which only thirteen of 165 artists were female-identifying, a group of artists and creative minds birthed an anonymous collective to call attention to art-world inequities.
The collective’s name—the Guerrilla Girls—was inspired by war tactics devised to be irregular, sudden, and often shocking. In their work, each “Girl” adopted anonymity in two ways. First, they assumed the name of female creatives from the past, such as Gertrude Stein, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Zora Neale Hurston, thus giving “new” voice to creative women throughout history. Second, they donned gorilla masks, inspired by an accidental misspelling of the word “guerrilla.”
Over the past four decades, the Guerrilla Girls have protested various forms of corruption through mass-produced works featuring simplistic, yet eye-capturing typography, bright contrasting colors, loaded infographics, and their signature rhetorical and sardonic language. They have extended their message internationally through actions and exhibitions. While their origins stemmed from the art world, their agenda has since expanded to critique sexism, homophobia, and racism in areas such as film, mass culture, economics, and politics, to name a few.
The exhibition will feature approximately a dozen works from the collective’s first five years. Drawing from the Guerrilla Girls Portfolio Compleat: 1985–2012, the exhibition will highlight the collective’s iconic beginnings and examine the Girls’ earliest concerns with the art world – revealing not only what has changed since then, but also where true progress remains to be made.
Guerrilla Girls: 40 Years Ago will be on view concurrently with the traveling show Petah Coyne: How Much a Heart Can Hold, organized by the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, creating a direct dialogue between the two projects. Within this traveling exhibition is a section devoted to Coyne’s collaborative project with Kathy Grove, entitled The Real Guerrillas, which pays homage to the founding twelve members of the Guerrilla Girls.
Guerrilla Girls: 40 Years Ago is organized by the Neuberger Museum of Art and curated by Curatorial Assistant Rebecca Elisabeta Marya Ribeiro, with the assistance of three fall 2024 curatorial interns.
Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) Foundation and the Friends of the Neuberger Museum of Art.