6. Weenie Counts By The Guerrilla Girls
Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The female activists wanted to bring to light the white male dominance that was harboured within the art community. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality within the fine arts to focus within the greater community. Members are known for the gorilla masks they wear to remain anonymous. During the first years after its founding, the Guerrilla Girl’s started conducting “weenie counts,” where members would go to institutions, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and count the male to female subject ratio in artworks. The data gathered from the Met’s public collections in 1989 showed that in the Modern Art sections less than 5% of the works were by female artists, while 85% of the nudes were female.