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The Brooklyn Paper / Tom Callan

Welcome to the jungle: Four of the original Guerrilla Girls, who go by the pseudonyms (left to right) Alice Neel, Gertrude Stein, Frida Kahlo and Kathe Kollwitz, were honored by the Brooklyn Museum’s Community Committee on Nov. 9.

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Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman is certainly not a bad sport — he just presented an award to a group of art activists who once protested his museum’s most-controversial show, “Sensation.”

Nonetheless, the Guerrilla Girls — four artists who don gorilla masks partly for the attention and partly for the anonymity they provide — earned Lehman’s respect.

They’re “far from frivolous,” he told GO Brooklyn at a luncheon in the museum’s Beaux-Arts Court.

The Nov. 9 ceremony, lunch and fundraiser, organized by the museum’s volunteer Community Committee, marked the first time an institution of this size and stature had honored the gang of activists who have been fighting sexism and racism in the art world for 20 years.

But Lehman treated it like another day at the office. After all, he said, he had just attended a gallery show by notorious Manhattan artist Dash Snow — who uses ejaculate like Jackson Pollock used paint.

But it did feel a little odd to the honorees.

“We’re happy being outsiders,” said Kathe Kollwitz (er, the woman who uses Kollwitz as her pseudonym) from beneath her gorilla mask. “We’re totally perverse. With this honor, and being included in the 2005 Venice Biennale, as a political artist, you have to ask, ‘what am I doing wrong?’ But we are also artists and believe in getting our message out. … Are we being co-opted? Who the hell knows?”

Belle Tanenhaus, who coordinated the event, said the GGs were a perfect fit with the museum’s new feminist department. “We thought this would be a stimulating and provocative program,” she said.

And provocative it was! Although the GGs have published several books (including “Bitches, Bimbos and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls’ Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes”), and been approached by producers who want to make films about their lives, and have a class about them being taught at Brooklyn College, their true identities are still unknown.

To this day, the artists feared their careers would be harmed by publicly condemning — through posters and demonstrations — injustice in the art world.

With their PowerPoint presentation, the four GGs (Kollwitz, “Frida Kahlo,” “Gertrude Stein” and “Alice Neel”) reminisced about their early days of plastering posters on mailboxes (a federal offense!) and rebuking the titans of the art world — the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“When we put up the posters, we would be chased by the cops,” recalled Neel, her mask’s rouged lips catching the spotlight.

They said they came to affectionately refer to their work tallying up the ratio of female to male artists displayed in those museums as their “weenie count,” but said that while there are moments when women artists seem to be getting more wall space in museums and galleries than they used to, those high points are followed by trends where the number of works by female artists takes a dip.

Despite those setbacks, the GGs continue their worldwide mission, while encouraging others to join their cause.

“Change doesn’t happen,” said Kollwitz. “You have to fight for it. Create your own crazy way of being an activist and feminist.”

Curiously, during their historical reverie, there was no mention of the GG’s poster targeting the Brooklyn Museum’s 1999 “Sensation” exhibit that claimed British collector Charles Saatchi “paid the museum to show his art collection.”

Kollwitz confessed that she and the other GGs really “agonized over going along with museums,” as they are now asked to create artworks for institutions and high profile events, including the 2005 Venice Biennale. Even being honored by the Brooklyn Museum requires them to transform from outsiders to insiders when they accept the invitation to speak. The GGs say they cooperate if it helps bring their message to a larger audience, but they were careful to point out that the award wouldn’t absolve the Brooklyn Museum of any future scrutiny.

“We’re happy to get the award, but it doesn’t mean the pressure is off,” said Kollwitz.

Of course, Lehman isn’t worrying.

“Why would I?” he said. “Their goal is to move things positively forward.”

Among the suggestions offered by the GGs in getting more art by women on the walls, was to get more women curators on museum staffs. Lehman told GO Brooklyn that half of the museum’s latest hires are “young and full of energy” and half of them are women.

One of those curators, Maura Reilly of the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, welcomed the GGs with “giddy, bad girl pleasure” and characterized their work as being in the tradition of do-gooders Batman and Robin.

“We do have a secret sorority all over the world,” proclaimed Frida Kahlo. “Watch what you say.”

©2007 The Brooklyn Paper