Q. While reading about Pussy Riot, the Russian punk rock women protesting Vladimir V. Putin’s leadership, I saw references to the Guerrilla Girls. What are they doing now?

A. Pussy Riot and Guerrilla Girls respect each other.

“Pussy Riot are our kind of girls: masked feminist activists who create trouble,” wrote two longtime Guerrilla Girls, “Frida Kahlo” and “Kathe Kollwitz,” in an email, reported by The New York Times in 2012. the world needs more masked avengers feminists. We urge everyone to create problems, each in their own way. “

For those who may not know them, the Guerrilla Girls are a collective of anonymous artist-activists – there have been around 100 members over the years – who in the mid-1980s began to protest against the almost total absence of female artists. represented in the collections and exhibits of museums in the United States. From the start, the important ingredients of their work have been humor and great visuals. The protests have included artistic performances in front of museums and other public appearances, always wearing gorilla masks. The Guerrilla Girls identify themselves under pseudonyms like Lee Krasner and Diane Arbus. Other creations have included comics, stickers, videos, billboards, large-format newspapers in museum bathrooms, magazines, and provocative posters.

They have a huge website, guerrillagirls.com, which says, “We use humor to convey information, spark discussion, and show that feminists can be funny.”

“How many women had solo exhibitions in New York museums last year?” A 1980s poster read. (The total was one, at the Museum of Modern Art. Postscript: Some of the Guerrilla Girls’ creations are now part of MoMA’s permanent collection.)

Another, from around 1990, said, “Do women have to be naked to enter the Met Museum? He said 85 percent of the nudes in the museum’s modern art sections were female, but less than 5 percent of the artists were female. This poster showed Ingres’s “Grande Odalisque” with a gorilla head.

Activists’ efforts have expanded to support artists of color, gay and lesbian causes, and women in movies, in front of and behind the camera (as of 2003: “Even the US Senate is more progressive than Hollywood”) . The “nude” poster has been reworked to end with “American museums”, and again, with “music videos” as a target.

In 2001, some former members formed two independent groups: a vaudeville troupe, Guerrilla Girls on Tour and Guerrilla Girls Broadband to address issues in the workplace and on the Internet.

Q. To me, Joan Rivers was New York. Do you have any jokes from her on the town?

A. Here are three printables.

“My favorite city in the world is New York. Sure, it’s dirty, but like a beautiful lady smoking a cigar. (From “The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom,” edited by Gregg Stebben and Jason Katzman, Skyhorse Publishing.)

“I love my apartment in New York. It was a ballroom that I remade, so it’s like a loft but made by Louis XV. (From brainyquote.com.)

“I think all race, religion and ethnicity should have at least one day in their honor which is a legal holiday. And because I live in New York, that means there would be 335 public holidays… which means 335 days of suspended parking on the alternate side of the street… ”. (From “Diary of a Mad Diva,” by Joan Rivers, Berkley Books.)