October 13 Provost’s Lecture with The Guerrilla Girls

Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready to Make Nice 

The Guerrilla Girls (photo by Traven Rice)

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective of feminist activist artists. Appearing only in gorilla masks and assuming the names of dead women artists, the group has remained anonymous for more than three decades while revealing shocking truths about sexism and prejudice in the art world and beyond. The Guerrilla Girls have created more than 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world and have a national traveling exhibition of their recent international work, titled Not Ready to Make Nice, now on view at the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery in Staller Center.

Abstract: In a lively multimedia presentation, two of the Guerrilla Girls discuss the ongoing work of this feminist-activist collective. Beginning with their provocative poster campaigns of the 1980s and continuing with large-scale international projects, their performative presentation shows some of their most influential large-scale campaigns on billboards, museums exteriors and the streets. The Guerrilla Girls will show how they use “facts, humor and fake fur” to expose the discriminatory collecting and exhibiting practices of some of the most powerful art dealers, curators and collectors. Expanding their work to include non-visual arts media in the 1990s, they’ve taken on everything from the discrimination of women film directors to the environmental crisis. With an introduction by the curator of Not Ready to Make Nice, the presentation is followed by a Q&A with the Guerrilla Girls.

This Provost’s Lecture will be held on Thursday, October 13, at 4 pm in the Charles B. Wang Center Theatre. It is part of Stony Brook’s Diversity Plan Initiative and is co-sponsored by Humanities Institute, College of Arts and Sciences, and Departments of Art and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.