Guerrilla Girls' Code of Ethics for Art Museums

GUERRILLA GIRLS

American, active since 1985

Guerrilla Girls' Code of Ethics for Art Museums, 1990

Offset lithograph on paper, 33/50

Acquired with funds from the Board of Visitors Muscarelle Museum of Art Endowment

2017.121,28

An anonymous group of women founded the Guerrilla Girls in 1985, in response to a MoMA exhibition that claimed to survey recent art across the world but hardly included any women or people of color. Ever since, the Guerrilla Girls have created artworks that expose sexual and racial discrimination in the art world. Their purposefully advertisement-like work provides an intersection between ethics, art-making, and well-being. This lithograph depicts two stone tablets listing a proposed code ethics with Roman numerals, evoking Moses and the Ten Commandments. The code sardonically calls out nepotism, favoritism, insider influence, and complicity in the art world.

Tori Erisman ‘22