QUICK TAKES - April 7, 2009

The Getty Research Institute said Monday that it has acquired the papers of the Guerrilla Girls for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition includes documents, letters and artwork created by the radical feminist art group from 1985 to 2000.

The acquisition comprises about 30 to 40 boxes of material from the Guerrilla Girls’ common archive, according to one of the group’s founding members, who would identify herself only as “Kathe Kollwitz.”

Over the years, the Getty Research Institute has acquired a number of works by the Guerrilla Girls, including 48 posters, most copies of their books and the quarterly newsletter “Hot Flashes.”

Founded in New York in 1985, Guerrilla Girls is a collective of anonymous activists whose mission is to fight discrimination against women and artists of color using the visual arts. Members of the group often wear gorilla masks in public and take aggressive steps to make their voices heard.

In 2008, the group organized a letter-writing campaign against the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in L.A., citing a lack of works by women and minorities in the permanent collection.

-- David Ng