Guerrilla Girls Archive

Call Number

MSS.274

Date

1985-ongoing, inclusive

Creator

Guerrilla Girls (Group of artists) (Role: Artist)

Extent

9 Linear Feet

in 7 record cartons, 2 manuscript boxes, 3 oversize boxes, and 1 oversize folder

Extent

7 websites

in 7 archived websites.

Language of Materials

Materials are in English.

Abstract

Founded in 1985, the Guerrilla Girls are a feminist art collective who focus on issues of gender and racial inequity in the art world, specifically the under-representation of women and minorities in museum and gallery exhibitions. Guerrilla Girls BroadBand continues the works of the Guerrilla Girls, with a special focus on web activism. Their archive includes posters, financial and legal documents, correspondence, and printed ephemera that span the existence of the collective and shed light on its transition from upstart activist group to a trio of organizations, each with their own feminist focus.

Historical Note

In 1985, a group of female artists, incensed by an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art that included 165 artists but only 17 women, founded the Guerrilla Girls. From that point on, using statistics-based, text-centric posters and billboards, the group sought to educate the art world about its own institutionalized discrimination by targeting art institutions and art critics who failed to provide women and minorities representation. The group also staged public interventions while wearing gorilla masks to protect their identities. Anonymity is a key aspect of the group's activism, and members (primarily artists) adopt the names of overlooked artists as pseudonyms.

In the late nineties, the Guerrilla Girls entered a phase during which some of its founding members split apart from the group. Disagreements over focus, financial dealings, and the future of the collective's mission led to the formation of three separate groups, all three of which still functioned as of 2013. Today, the GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand, Inc., Guerrilla Girls On Tour, Inc. (the Theatre Girls), and Guerrilla Girls, Inc. all continue to promote the objectives of the collectives.

Guerrilla Girls BroadBand was formed in 2001. While continuing the aims of the original Guerrilla Girls, it sees the world wide web as its "natural habitat". From their viewpoint, the "original Unincorporated Collective of Guerrilla Girls had come unstuck partly through a lack of agreed procedures for such things as diversity, power-sharing, and collective rights to intellectual property. The Broads set out to fix these problems and blaze a trail for future collective artistic endeavours."

Sources:

Guerrilla Girls BroadBand "about page" (ggbb.org/about) Guerrilla Girls chronology (www.guerrillagirls.com/info/index.shtml)

Arrangement

Primarily, collection materials are arranged chronologically within each series. Undated materials are generally found at the end of each series or subseries. Realia, video, and audio media have been separated out into a separate subseries to facilitate usage. Each object and media element have then been assigned unique identification numbers.

The collection is arranged into eight series:

Series I. Administrative Records Subseries A. Guerrilla Girls Notes, Correspondence, and Clippings
Subseries B. GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand Notes and Correspondence
Subseries C. Financial Documentation and Accounting Records
Subseries D. Archive Sale Documentation and Correspondence

Series II. Legal Records and Related Correspondence Subseries A. Legal Documents and Proceedings
Subseries B. Miscellaneous Legal Correspondence and Research Notes

Series III. Lectures, Performances, and Exhibitions Subseries A. Gig Notes, Correspondence, and Clippings
Subseries B. Related Catalogs and Publications

Series IV. Research and Notes Subseries A. Guerrilla Girls Project Notes
Subseries B. Miscellaneous Research and Clippings

Series V. Posters and Graphic Works Subseries A. Posters
Subseries B. Postcards, Stickers, and Miscellaneous Graphic Works
Subseries C. Dimensional Works and Ephemera

Series VI. Publications Subseries A. Publications
Subseries B. Proofs and Notes

Series VII. Media Subseries A. Originals

Series VIII. Archived Websites

The Oversize Series is preserved in boxes 7 and 8. This series includes materials from Series III, V, and VI.

Scope and Contents

This collection includes posters, financial and legal documents, correspondence, and ephemera that span the existence of the collective from its founding in 1985, to the incarnation and continued existence of the splinter group Guerrilla Girls BroadBand. Records shed light on the group's transition from an upstart activist group, to a trio of organizations, each with their own feminist focus.

Subjects

Organizations

Guerrilla Girls (Group of artists)

Genres

Political posters.

Topics

Art, Modern -- United States -- 20th century.; Art, Modern -- 20th century -- Exhibitions.; Political activists.; Feminism and art.; Women artists -- United States.; Women artists -- Exhibitions.; Art -- Political aspects.; Art museums -- New York (N.Y.); Artists -- Exhibitions

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open to researchers.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright (or related rights to publicity and privacy) for materials in this collection was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.

Preferred Citation

Published citations should take the following form:

Identification of item, date (if known); Guerrilla Girls Archive; MSS 274; box number; folder number; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.

To cite the archived website in this collection: Identification of item, date; Guerrilla Girls Archive; MSS 274; Wayback URL; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University.

Provenance

The collection was donated to NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections by artist and Franklin Furnace founder Martha Wilson in 2010. Additional materials were donated in 2015; the accession number associated with this gift is 2015.274.

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/ was initially selected by curators and captured through the use of The California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service in 2007 as part of the Other Left Activism Web Archive. In 2015, these websites were migrated to Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. In 2017, crawling was discontinued in the Other Left Activism Web Archive and restarted in the Guerrilla Girls Web Archive. http://guerrillagirlsbroadband.com was initially captured in 2015 in the Guerrilla Girls Web Archive and continued in 2017 in the Guerrilla Girls Broadband Web Archive. In 2019, http://guerrillagirlsontour.com/ was added to the Guerrilla Girls Web Archive. The accession number associated with this seed is 2019.055. Indidivdual videos were added to better capture the videos embedded in http://www.guerrillagirls.com/. The accession number associated with the videos is 2019.061. In August 2021, https://www.themalegraze.com/ was added. The accession number asssociated with this website is 2022.011. In September 2021, https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1MZdTCzaBYXUxtvr9NqDW5yQbamkwsZhX&ll=53.04642406914769,0.153804424388424&z=7 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTMrLOz57uj4FTWDAHDhpfUQpy2grbpcSwfFApuhtJjMGUgy10yhs1VkmZuzOf9xPTZKHR4tvAAKXbk/pubhtml https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTzPxzXU73Y were added. The accession number associated with these websites is 2022.014. In December 2023, https://www.youtube.com/@GUERRILLAGIRLS/videos/ was added. The accession number associated with this website is 2024.003.

Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements

Audiovisual materials have not been preserved and may not be available to researchers.

Take Down Policy

Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.

If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the repository email.

Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.

Related Collections

Martha Wilson Papers (MSS.175)

Guerrilla Girls Records (2008.M.14), The Getty Research Institute

Collection processed by

Rosemary K. J. Davis.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-03-28 11:03:30 -0400.

Language: Description is in English

Processing Information

As part of processing, real names of members of the Guerrilla Girls were redacted to protect the anonymity on which the group relies. Redactions were made on photocopy facsimiles. In 2015, an addition was added to the collection, and incorporated into series V.B. (Postcards, Stickers, and Miscellaneous Graphic Works) and V.C. (Dimensional Works and Ephemera) in accordance with previous arrangement decisions, and due to their similar fomats and content.

In 2019 and 2022-2023, the archived websites were added as Series VIII.

Revisions to this Guide

January 2024: Edited by Nicole Greenhouse to reflect additional administrative information and added archived websites

Repository

Fales Library and Special Collections