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For my semester project I wrote an essay on gender equality in art. I specifically focused my paper on the statistics of the male vs. female ratio of exhibitions at the biggest museums. I looked at all of the Guerrilla Girls' posters and picked four of which impacted me the most. They are four posters that related to my topic the most and I felt like they deserved to be shared again to make more people aware of the staggering facts in them.
One of the posters I picked was one we have all seen in class before. It is the one that raises the question "Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? The original poster was created in 1989 and the statistics were that less than 5% of artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female. The Guerilla Girls updated the poster in 2012 and I thought the numbers would have changed tremendously since 23 years have passed since the first poster came out. In 2012, the new stats were worse than the first in a way because now it indicated that less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Act sections are women, it actually went down by 1%! The second part slightly improved, by 2012, 76% of the nudes were female compared to 85% in 1989.
I also wrote about a lot of questions that I have on this topic, like for example "Why did it take a course in college for me to realize there are so many great women artists and learn about them?" I feel like male artists are common knowledge and are more talked about and taught because we live in a patriarchal society and this is the way history has always been taught. We think this is the way things are supposed to be or sometimes even fail to ask questions as to why this happens.
I have been to the MoMa and the Guggenheim before taking this class and it never occurred to me that women do not get exhibited as much as men. We also fail to raise our voices on this topic, maybe because there is work involved or maybe because most people don't care enough. The purpose of my essay is first, for people to learn about these crazy statistics, because I know that most people don't know about them. I want to shed light into the Guerrilla Girls and the fun way that such a serious issue is being discussed and shared by them. Second, I want people to see my questions on the topic and start asking themselves the same things. The more people know about it, the more people question, the greater the chances that this issue will be discussed more, and hopefully one day there can be a bigger change in gender equality in art.
Since my essay is focused on posters and an essay is not much of a visual, I created a collage of the most relevant words in my essay and this topic overall. I wanted for people to have an idea of what my paper is about without even having to read it.
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| 1989 Poster |
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| 2012 Poster |
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Works Cited
"Are Women Still a Minority in Art Museums?" New Britain Museum of American Art. 3 Dec. 2010. Web. 21 Apr. 2015.< https://nbmaa.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/are-women-still-a-minority-in-art-museums/>.
"GUERRILLA GIRLS: Fighting Discrimination with Facts, Humor and Fake Fur." GUERRILLA GIRLS. The Guerrilla Girls. Web. 21 Apr. 2015. <http://www.guerrillagirls.com>.
This project needs more visuals! I am also feeling like you have just scratched the surface of the reseacrha dn the potential of this article/blog. What are your intentions for this project? Please expand on this post as well as I asked very clearly for a well written summary on the class blog in addition to a link to your project. I am clearly directed to the blog but feel like there is very little content there aside from a single blog post. How do you intend this single post to make change in a larger audience?
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