Top Ten Signs That You’re an Art World Token
- Artist: Guerrilla Girls
- Date: 1995
- Medium: Lithograph on paper
- Dimensions: support: 432 x 559 mm
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Top Ten Signs That You’re an Art World Token” by Guerrilla Girls, a bold lithograph from 1995. The piece is a punchy, pop‑pink and yellow poster that throws straight statistics at the viewer, using humor and irony to expose the sexism and exclusion that still linger in major art institutions. The Guerrilla Girls, a collective of anonymous women artists who hide behind gorilla masks, pioneered this style in the mid‑80s to fight gender bias in the art world. Their posters rely on hard data – the exact numbers of women represented at major museums – and rhetorical questions that make you think, “Do we really need to keep these numbers hidden?” The design is clean yet eye‑catching: bold black text over bright backgrounds, making the facts impossible to ignore. This work continues that legacy, challenging us to confront the tokenism that can still exist behind the prestige of art galleries.
See it in person
Top Ten Signs That You’re an Art World Token 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.
