"The conscience of the art world"

BRIDGEPORT - Internationally famous advocates of feminism and social change, The Guerilla Girls, will be at Housatonic Community College at 12:30 p.m. Oct. Oct. 23 to discuss the role of female artists. The presentation, being held in conjunction with the Why Not?! art exhibit that explores women pushing boundaries, will be followed by a question and answer session with one of the group.

“The Guerilla Girls are truly the conscience of the art world,” Robbin Zella, director of the Housatonic Museum of Art said in a statement. “For more than 20 years, they have been using their special brand of humor to combat discrimination, first in art and later in culture and politics.”

The group was founded in 1985 after a group of female artists became incensed that an exhibition by some 170 artists at the Museum of Modern Art contained the works of only 17 women. Donning gorilla masks and names of dead women artists to hide their identities, group members began an odyssey that resulted in more than 90 posters, actions, billboards, postcards, books and magazine projects that focused attention on discrimination, the statement said.

During this odyssey, they have been the subject of articles in newspapers and magazines in both the United States and abroad, including The New Yorker, MS magazine, Vogue, Esquire, and the New York Times.

They have been featured on many U.S and international radio and television stations, and have spoken at colleges, universities and art museums worldwide.

The HCC event, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the Burt Chernow Galleries in Lafayette Hall at HCC, 900 Lafayette Blvd. The college in in Downtown Bridgeport is less than 150 yards off Interstate 95's Exit 27 and Route 8's Exit 1, a block from the Arena at Harbor Yard.