The Dennos Museum Center at Northwestern Michigan College will present the exhibition Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Art World and Beyond, March 20-May 29, 2016. The exhibition and related events are outlined herein.
Not Ready to Make Nice, a major presentation of the Guerrilla Girls, illuminates and contextualizes the important historical and ongoing work of these highly original, provocative and influential artists who champion feminism and social change. The Guerrilla Girls have been powerfully and consistently active since first breaking onto the art scene in 1985. Appearing only in gorilla masks and assuming the names of dead women artists, the activist group has remained anonymous for nearly three decades while revealing shocking truths about sexism and prejudice in the art world and beyond. Beginning with their courageous poster campaigns of the 1980s and continuing with large-scale international projects, they brilliantly take on the art establishment in a way that has never been seen before or since. Using “facts, humor and fake fur,” they have exposed the discriminatory collecting and exhibiting practices of the most feared art dealers, curators, and collectors. Expanding their work to include non-visual arts media in the 1990s, they’ve taken on everything from the discrimination of women film directors to the environmental crisis.
Focusing primarily on recent work from the past decade, the exhibition features rarely shown international projects that trace the collective’s artistic and activist influence around the globe. In addition, a selection of iconic work from the 80s and 90s illustrates the formative development of the group’s philosophy and conceptual approach to arts activism. Documentary material including ephemera, behind-the-scenes photos and secret anecdotes reveal the Guerrilla Girls’ process and the events that drive their incisive institutional interventions. Visitors can peruse the artists’ favorite “love letters and hate mail,” and are invited to contribute their own voices to interactive installations. This multimedia, expansive exhibition illustrates that the work of the anonymous, feminist-activist Guerrilla Girls is as vital and revolutionary as ever.
Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond is organized and circulated by Columbia College Chicago, and curated by Neysa Page-Lieberman, Director of the Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces at Columbia College Chicago.
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert T. and Ruth Haidt Hughes Memorial Endowment Fund and TV 7&4.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
GUERRILLA POSTER JAM: Activism and Art in the Digital Age – A Special Presentation of Artist After Hours with Crosshatch and Blackbird Arts
Thursday, April 14, 2016 – 6:00–8:00pm
Free admission
From #BlackLivesMatter to #HeForShe, online activism has become the preferred mode of speaking out on all sorts of issues through video, photography, and other visual art. In 1985, the Guerilla Girls only had copy machines and poster paste to fight against gender bias in the art world. Let’s celebrate the power and history of activist art by bringing it back to posters with powerful messages. Explore Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond in the Dennos galleries, then join partner Blackbird Arts for hands-on help in creating your own prints and posters with a message of your choice. Of course it’s 2016, so you can take photos and videos of your creation to combine with hashtags and send it out into the world.
Pizza and salad will be available along with beverages. RSVP online at facebook.com/thedennos by clicking through to the event page.
THE STATE OF THE ARTS: Do We Need the Guerrilla Girls in Traverse City?
Sunday, May 1, 2016 – 1:00pm
Free admission
Since the 1980s, the Guerrilla Girls have been using their art to call into question longstanding biases and policies of the most well-known arts institutions. As seen in the exhibition, Not Ready to Make Nice: Guerrilla Girls in the Artworld and Beyond, the group has expanded its focus to television and film while still demanding inclusiveness in New York and LA galleries and museums.
Bringing the focus to a local level, do we need the Guerrilla Girls in Traverse City? Join several women artists and the community for a conversation about the local arts scene. Including artists and gallery owners such as Joan Richmond, Mary Beth Acosta, and Christie Minervini, the program will explore what it means to be a woman artist in the Grand Traverse region and in the larger art world. Coffee and light refreshments will be included.
The Dennos Museum Center is open daily 10 AM to 5PM, Thursdays until 8 PM, and Sundays 1-5 PM. For information on the Museum and its programs, visit www.dennosmuseum.org or call (231) 955-1055. The Dennos Museum Center is located at 1410 College Dr., Traverse City, MI 49686, at the entrance to the campus of Northwestern Michigan College.