Story by Leslie Highsmith
The Guerrilla Girls will perform – and question equality in art – Thursday.
Fewer than 3 percent of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are women, but 83 percent of the nudes are female.
With this tagline, the Guerilla Girls, an internationally known group of anonymous avengers, pose the question: “Do women have to be naked to get into United States art museums?” Gender equity in the arts will be the message delivered to a Las Cruces audience this week.
The Guerrilla Girls are a group of feminists and artists who use the names of deceased female artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks to conceal their identities. This removes the focus from the performers and aims it at the issue.
According to the group’s Web site, the historical activist group started in 1985 in response to The Museum of Modern Art in New York’s exhibition, “An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture,” in which only 13 of 169 artists were women, and all 169 artists were white.
Not a narrow focus
Though the group originally started as the “conscience of the art world,” it has also brought attention to important issues such as inequality in the world of politics and in Hollywood and the film industry.
The NMSU Department of Women’s Studies reports that the Guerrilla Girls Las Cruces debut performance will take place Thursday, March 11 at 7 p.m. at the Court Youth Center. The performance will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Women’s Studies Program at New Mexico State University, as well as help celebrate Waded Cruzado Gender Justice Week.
“Dr. Cruzado believed in women’s studies and its significance at the university. She understood the potential of women’s studies at NMSU and invested resources where little had been invested before,” said Lisa Bond-Maupin, director of the women’s studies program and sociology department head, said in a press release.
Tickets are available from Ticketmaster or at the Pan American Center. Students can purchase tickets for $5 and members of the general public can purchase tickets for $12.
The event is sponsored by NMSU Women’s Studies Program, NMSU Department of Sociology, NMSU Office of the Provost, and Women’s Studies/Journalism “Women and PR Group.”
