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Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo on official business

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It’s a constant struggle. Accepting an award from a major museum is a little tough, except we have to promise we’ll continue to criticize them. We made them put that in their press release.

I saw that. And you have criticized them directly in the past. Do you expect any hard feelings when you show up there?

Who knows? We criticized the deal that was made with Charles Saatchi over the “Sensation” show. Saatchi paid for that show, or paid for a good part of it, and then sold the same work at auction. That’s a conflict of interest.  

What was the group’s reaction to winning the award?

Some people were really thrilled, some people were really skeptical. Some of us thought, Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could use this to make some changes?

Is that the plan?

We’re going to do a short presentation that deal with some museum issues. They may not all relate to the Brooklyn Museum. We think that American museums have lots of conflicts of interest. They’re run by professionals, but their governing boards are made up of art collectors who are also art investors, so what happens in the museum can have a lot of influence on what happens in the market. And we think that’s a lousy way to tell the history of a culture.

What are your upcoming projects?

We’re going to do some stuff about Hollywood, we’re gonna continue working on art-world stuff. We have our Web site up and going. We’re really excited about that. It’s a great way to proselytize.

My favorite thing on your site is your threat that the “next time art critic Michael Kimmelman pans a show that actually includes a fair number of women and artists of color like his hysterical rant against the Whitney Biennial of 1993 we’re going to send him a year’s supply of Midol.” Did you ever do that?

No, but we’re sure he’s been affected by the threat.

There seem to be more women taking positions of power at museums these days. Do you think that’ll have any effect on the art world?

Well, we would hope, but women have had positions of power for a long time at museums. Maybe not directorships, but they’ve been curators for a long time. Not all women are feminists, though we would like them to be. We’d like more men to be feminists.

There’s something about the word "feminist" that scares people. A lot of people agree with the tenets of feminism—equal pay for equal work, human rights for women everywhere, equal opportunity—but they stop short of saying that they’re feminists. We want to make feminism fashionable again.