Guerrilla Girls at the Whitechapel Gallery.

What a wonderful day out with my friend, Lisa!

Guerrilla Girls poster outside the Whitechapel Gallery
(and over the station sign to my beloved Aldgate East station, where I was the Duty Station Manager!).

Yesterday I went to their exhibition and talk "Is it even worse in Europe?".  There was a one room exhibition which was very much in the style of Conceptual Art, Art & Language Group, where the meaning does not lie with the material object but with the theoretical argument underpinning it.  The theorising is the primary activity for these artists, not a subsidiary to it.

The Guerrilla Girls had sent a thought provoking, if slightly aggressive, questionnaire to 383 museums/ Kunsthalles in Europe.  (I had to ask what Kunsthalle meant, and it is an art space that does not have a collection, but exhibits work that they do not own - like Whitechapel Gallery).  101 responded, 282 did not (c1/4 responded).  The 101 responders were listed on the wall; the 282 who did not were listed on the floor!

I need to go back and photograph the questionnaire as it raised a lot of questions in my mind.  How did they select the respondents? (I thought there must be more art galleries in Europe).   How did they compile the questions? The questions must have been carefully constructed, but were they meant to intimidate (leading to a risk of non-response); to enable a respectful answer; to provoke the museum to start some self-analysis; or to lure in for annihilation?  The GG had collated the responses into a book, which were secured to a desk in the room.  They had also used copies of all the answers to paper a wall, over which were placed GG posters of key responses -

Your first time running stats on diversity (some museums admitted this was their first time!)
Even better in Poland (Polish museums show more women artists, give more honorarium payments to exhibitors, and have more women in charge)
Female trouble (only 2 museums exhibited more than 40% women artists, 21% have fewer than 20%)
Where in the World is Whitechapel (13% of solo shows from people from outside Europe and US)
Genderosity (78% non-gender conforming artists at Witte de With, lowest at Guggenheim, 30 did not answer)
Complaints (But 40% of our team are women!, your questionnaire does not enable non-English punctuation to be included (fair comment!), US centric bias)
So Sorry (Not able to answer your questions)
US Museum practices polluting Europe (No - Guggenheim; Yes, let's fight; Such as … parallel gun shooting?; No selfie stick)
What Keeps Museum Directors up at night (funding).

One of the quotes was:

"The Guerrilla Girls focus on the understory, the subtext, the overlooked and the downright unfair.  Art cannot be reduced to the small number of artists who have won a popularity contest among the big time dealers, curators and collectors.  Unless museums and kunsthalles show art as diverse as the cultures they claim to represent, they are not showing the history of art, they are just preserving the history of Wealth and Power!"

The GGs are running a 5 day event at Tate - this will be worth going to next week.

I tried to take notes of the lecture, but struggled to keep up.  There were 2 gorillas, Frida and Kathe Kollewitz.  They have 55 gorilla members, diverse women by race and orientation, successful artists and unrecognised ones.  All voices required.  GGs were agitating outsiders, who are now insiders!

When GGs started, they analysed collections and noted Renaissance and Ancient Greek treated women and men artworks equally (either all nude, or all clothed, except for Baby Jesus who was the only naked, full frontal man, depending on the period), but it was in the 19th/20th century when women were depicted nude and men were clothed.  In the 1980s it was always the same minority artists who were shown.  Tokenism became the solution.  GGs became part of the establishment - shock, horror - in art history lectures - what to do?  They chose to participate - still attacking.  They discovered works of female artists were usually in the basement.  Underneath the men.  So they put women on top!  They also noted when Victorian museums have names around the portico, they are all male - why not put women's names up?

Key point I need to consider - "if you can make someone who disagrees with you, laugh, you have a hook inside their brain.

GGs Activity Book.  GGs Facebook pace.  GGs Hysterical Herstory of Hysteria.  Feminism is a cure for hysteria?

The GGs shows their brand new video manifesto.  Brilliant.  Look it up on Youtube.

Claim a stereotype to disarm it.  This is why they use Guerrilla name/ Gorilla masks, and the term Girls.

They now get positive media attention, not lunatics in gorilla masks.

Fantastic day out. I was too slow to gain maximum benefit.

The hands of a creative person - my friend Lisa