- Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female StereotypesBy Guerrilla Girls
- Guerrilla Girls' Art Museum Activity BookBy Guerrilla Girls
- The Guerrilla Girls' Bedside Companion to the History of Western ArtOur PickBy Guerrilla Girls
Important Art by The Guerrilla Girls
Dearest Art Collector (1986)
Shortly after forming their group, The Guerrilla Girls sent this poster to well- known art collectors, pointing out how few works they owned by women artists. Addressed "Dearest Collector", and made to resemble a hand-written letter on powder-pink paper, the rounded cursive script crowned with a frowning flower oozes femininity, exemplifying the scathing sarcasm for which the Guerrilla Girls were known. This send up of femininity is aimed at the expectation that, even when presenting a serious complaint, women should do so in a socially acceptable 'nice' way. "We know that you feel terrible about this" appeals to the feelings of the recipient. The group later transcribed it into other languages and sent it to collectors outside the U.S. A practical joke with serious implications, this poster is now (somewhat ironically) a collector's item.
The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist (1988)
The so-called "advantages" on this list numbers thirteen (i.e. an unlucky number) ways in which women are systematically excluded from art textbooks, exhibitions, and literature. "Seeing your ideas live on in the work of others" alludes to women's innovations that have been misattributed to men. "Knowing your career might pick up after you're eighty" refers to Louise Nevelson, Lee Krasner, Barbara Hepworth, and countless other women artists whose contributions to the history of art were only acknowledged at the very end of their careers. "Having the opportunity to choose between career and motherhood" addresses the persistent social expectation that women must choose (for men, there was no equivalent expectation). The list ends with a self-referential flourish: "Getting your picture in the art magazines wearing a gorilla suit." The Guerrilla Girls, working artists, were finding that they got more attention when dressed as gorillas, an irony that did not escape them. As they put it, "we discovered that the art world takes feminists more seriously when they use humor and wear a gorilla disguise." A prime example of the Guerrilla Girls' early work, this poster, distributed widely in Manhattan in 1988, uses wit and sarcasm to expose inequities of the art world.
When Racism & Sexism Are No Longer Fashionable, What Will Your Art Collection Be Worth? (1989)
At the end of the 1980s, contemporary art prices rose to astronomical heights. Work by contemporary women artists, however, did not rise to reflect this spike in the market. This poster reminds art collectors that the "art market won't bestow mega-buck prices on the work of a few white males forever," and that with the 17.7 million one Jasper Johns painting was worth in the present, the collector could buy at least one work by all of the sixty-seven women artists and artists of color on this list, which would presumably be worth much more in the future. The list includes well-known women artists, both contemporary and historical, such as Diane Arbus, Mary Cassatt, Sonia Delauney, Georgia O'Keeffe, Dorothea Lange, Angelica Kauffmann, and Rosa Bonheur. Women artists of color are also included, such as Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Remedios Varos, and Edmonia Lewis. Indeed, if the collector had listened, and acted as directed here, he or she would now be a billionaire.
This poster returns to a point raised three years earlier in the pink letter written to collectors. Instead of appealing to feelings, however, it makes a financially viable argument. By pointing out that one work by Jasper Johns was valued more highly than the work of all these women artists and artists of color put together, the Guerrilla Girls highlight the absurdity of the art world's sexist system of valuation. They also make the point that in order to remain competitive as an investor, a collector not only should, but must diversity his (or her) "art portfolio", by buying work by women and artists of color.
Influences and Connections

- Feminist Art
- Conceptual Art
- Activist Art
- Pussy Riot
- Coco Fusco