Guerrilla Girls’ Code Of Ethics For Art Museums
- Artist: Guerrilla Girls
- Date: 1990
- Medium: Screenprint on paper
- Dimensions: image: 435 x 560 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the "Guerrilla Girls’ Code Of Ethics For Art Museums" by Guerrilla Girls. A screenprint on paper from 1990, measuring 435 by 560 mm, it looks like two stone tablets with ten rules written in Roman numerals— a playful nod to the Ten Commandments. The text lists faux commandments that scold nepotism, favoritism and insider influence in the art world, all delivered with the group’s trademark dry humor.
The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous activist collective of women artists and professionals. They formed in 1985 after seeing a New York MoMA exhibition that featured only 13 women out of 169 artists. Wearing gorilla masks and adopting pseudonyms of deceased women artists, they use bold, data‑laden posters to expose sexism, racism and other inequalities in museums and galleries. This piece, one of their early 30‑poster portfolio, sits in a collection acquired in 2003 and carries the same sharp wit that has defined their activism for decades.
See it in person
Guerrilla Girls’ Code Of Ethics For Art Museums is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
