Though popular cultural retrospectives à la VH1’s I Love the 80s seem to shroud 1985 in a haze of AquaNet, others remember the year as a turning point for feminist activism. Amid Ronald Reagan’s second term and the expansion of the religious right, second wave feminists broadened the battle for gender equality. Among them were the Guerrilla Girls, the anonymous female art collective who in 1985 began designing posters calling out sexism in the art world.
The posters, which were wheatpasted around downtown Manhattan, inspired a new vein of political street art that's still prominent today. But because original Guerrilla Girls posters were printed in lots of less than 500 and were damaged by the wheatpasting process, many are unrecoverable. Now, GALLERY 98—an online gallery that specializes in the sale of original art and ephemera from the 1970s and 80s—has tracked down 18 original prints that were never posted on the streets and are in pristine condition.
The Guerrilla Girls’ poster campaign called out various power players and institutions by using humor and satire to frame shocking statistics on gender, racial, and class-based inequalities in art—all while incorporating images of gorillas and appearing publicly only in gorilla masks. Early posters proclaimed: "Women in America earn only 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do,” and “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female,” messages which compared to the emergent aesthetics of contemporaries Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.
This online exhibition comes at an interesting historical moment: as the thirtieth anniversary of the inaugural posters draws nearer, the anonymity central to the Guerilla Girls’ project is in jeopardy. The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles recently acquired the organization’s archives and cracked them open to researchers. As Gallery 98 bills: “Stay tuned. There may be surprises.”
All images provided courtesy of Gallery 98 | Explore Gallery 98's full selection of Guerilla Girls posters HERE
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Guerrilla Girls’ 1986 Report Card, Poster, 1986. Offset print on paper. 22 x 17 in.![]()
What Do These Artists Have in Common? poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x 22 in., 1985. ![]()
These Galleries Show No More Than 10% Women Artists or None at All. Guerrilla Girls public service poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x 22 in., 1985. ![]()
How Many Women Had One-Person Exhibitions at NYC Museums Last Year? poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x
The posters, which were wheatpasted around downtown Manhattan, inspired a new vein of political street art that's still prominent today. But because original Guerrilla Girls posters were printed in lots of less than 500 and were damaged by the wheatpasting process, many are unrecoverable. Now, GALLERY 98—an online gallery that specializes in the sale of original art and ephemera from the 1970s and 80s—has tracked down 18 original prints that were never posted on the streets and are in pristine condition.
The Guerrilla Girls’ poster campaign called out various power players and institutions by using humor and satire to frame shocking statistics on gender, racial, and class-based inequalities in art—all while incorporating images of gorillas and appearing publicly only in gorilla masks. Early posters proclaimed: "Women in America earn only 2/3 of what men do. Women artists earn only 1/3 of what men artists do,” and “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female,” messages which compared to the emergent aesthetics of contemporaries Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger.
This online exhibition comes at an interesting historical moment: as the thirtieth anniversary of the inaugural posters draws nearer, the anonymity central to the Guerilla Girls’ project is in jeopardy. The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles recently acquired the organization’s archives and cracked them open to researchers. As Gallery 98 bills: “Stay tuned. There may be surprises.”
All images provided courtesy of Gallery 98 | Explore Gallery 98's full selection of Guerilla Girls posters HERE
Guerrilla Girls’ 1986 Report Card, Poster, 1986. Offset print on paper. 22 x 17 in.
What Do These Artists Have in Common? poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x 22 in., 1985. 
These Galleries Show No More Than 10% Women Artists or None at All. Guerrilla Girls public service poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x 22 in., 1985. 
How Many Women Had One-Person Exhibitions at NYC Museums Last Year? poster. Offset print on paper. 17 x