acceptable to make hateful public statements about women, highlighting horrific quotes from Confucius to Picasso to Eminem. Estrogen Bomb, first appearing in the Village Voice in 2003, was the group’s sardonic, yet decidedly non-violent solution to the war on terror. They proposed a destructionfree, hormone-filled weapon that led people to “throw down their guns, hug each other, say it was all their fault,” and solve other problems afflicting the world such as poverty and absence of healthcare. Going Global: It’s Worse. . . Everywhere Sadly, the Guerrilla Girls never run out of issues to address and, thus, work to make, always compelled to confront and critique institutions and prejudices around the world. Much of their new work takes the form of invitations and commissions; even the Guerrilla Girls have been surprised by the demand for their work. They have made no shortage of enemies, humiliating powerful institutions, publicizing the names of the supposedly untouchable, and distributing their work far and wide.7 But their call to action has been telling—New York is not unique in its regressive exhibition practices and in fact, elsewhere may be even worse. In 2007, the Guerrilla Girls were invited by the Washington Post to critique the museums in Washington, D.C. in a special section on feminism and art. They designed a tabloid, Horror on the National Mall (Fig. 9), to reveal the appalling statistics that floored even the staff working within these institutions. The Girls recently reflected, “The Washington Post project was so telling: here you have tax payer supported institutions and exhibitions in a majority black city, but still there are almost no black artists on the walls.” While frustrating to see these problems persist, a marked difference now is that “people are embarrassed when these issues are pointed out. Before they would say that it was not possible or justifiable to show more women or artists of color.”8 Many individuals working on the inside knew of these problems but felt powerless to resolve them—this work and the resulting media attention gave them the ammunition to create change from the ground up. The 2005 Venice Biennale was called “the first feminist biennale” by the Guerrilla Girls who were asked by Rosa Martinez and Maria de Corral—the first women directors of the Biennale in its 110 year history—to critique the extremely influential international art fair. The result was Benvenuti alla Biennale Femminista (Fig. 10), which then led to a sweeping critique of Venice itself in Where are the Women Artists of Venice? (Fig. 11). Research revealed that almost every museum in Venice owns work by women, but almost all of it is relegated to basement storage. Thus, the answer to the question, “Where are the women artists” is, literally, “underneath the men.” The poster is illustrated with an iconic still from Federico Fellini’s film, La Dolce Vita, showing Marcello Mastroianni mounting Anita Ekberg. Other works, such as Irish Toast, 2009 (Fig. 12), and The Future for Turkish Women Artists,
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2006 (Fig. 13), were similarly commissioned by institutions to shed light on enduring and galling local statistics. Drawing from traditional local customs and rituals, these works contrast the two countries’ rich cultural inheritances with their minimal support or representation of diverse voices. While Ireland toasts, “May your academies be seminal,” Turkish coffee grounds reveal grave predictions: “Curators who forget women when they organize museum exhibitions and biennials will be banished to the US and EU where such backward ideas belong.” With so many world museums currently readdressing their collections, it is not surprising that the Guerrilla Girls have turned the spotlight on Chicago, one of the world’s most metropolitan and multicultural cities, boasting some of the largest collections of art and cultural objects. Some may think Chicago’s major art institutions would rank better than other cities, considering Chicago has a long and deep heritage of supporting women artists and artists of color. The School of the Art Institute, for example, was one of the first art schools in the nation to admit black students; there are flourishing cultural museums like the DuSable Museum for African American History and the National Museum of Mexican Art; numerous culture-shaping feminist art collectives (Artemesia and Woman Made, for example) and many more institutions whose mission it is to support diversity. However Chicago’s museums demonstrate the same problems as those documented in the Guerrilla Girls’ body of work.9 Chicago Museums: Time for Gender Reassignment, 2011 (Fig. 14), uses an image of the Art Institute’s iconic Beaux-Arts façade, featuring a cornice carved with the names of white, male historical figures, as a symbol of the predominance of similar trends inside the buildings of Chicago. The Guerrilla Girls pose as cherubic action heroes flying down from the heavens to remedy the situation by installing a new frieze that includes a more inclusive representation of art historical figures. The decision to use cherubs is particularly witty as they are genderless and thus better poised to fight bias. Gathering statistics directly from institutional websites and from work on view in the galleries in fall 2011, the Guerrilla Girls challenge Chicago to tackle the lack of diverse voices in its leading institutions, demanding that an accurate picture of history is impossible when the voices of 70 percent of the population are excluded.10 Hitting the Mainstream: Taking on Hollywood Around the turn of the twenty-first century, the Guerrilla Girls decided to address the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in the room—Hollywood. Prompted by correspondence from female film directors and an invitation from The Nation, who wanted to feature a project about women in film, The Anatomically Correct Oscar, 2002 (Fig. 15), was born. This work had its biggest impact at the Academy Awards where it was shown on a billboard just blocks away from the event. “We redesigned the Golden Boy to more closely resemble the guys who