Pussy Riot Plan to Open ‘Women-Only’ Museum in Montenegro
Pussy Riot have always mixed their art with a political purpose, but now their latest plan is to create a physical space for other women to do so. The group’s Maria Alyokhina has revealed the activists’ plans to launch a “women-only” museum in Montenegro.
In an interview with Artnet, Alyokhina announced that the New Balkan Women’s Museum will not only showcase art created by women, but it will also employ only female curators and administrators. The plans for the museum are in the early stages currently with no official opening date set as Alyokhina and the other members of the music and activism collective plan to consult with fellow feminists about the museum’s execution.
For Pussy Riot, the creation of the museum is part of expanding the collective into a larger movement. “In the media, in public spaces — a lot of people are just scared to say what they really are thinking,” Alyokhina told Artnet. “Because if you do it, you are going to prison.”
Earlier this year, Artnet had reported on the gender gap and pay disparity in museums. While 42.6 percent of museums in the United States are run by women, those museums are also the ones with the smallest budgets and their salaries were much lower than men in equivalent positions elsewhere. The difference in female versus male solo exhibitions were much more startling. Since 2007, only 16 percent of solo exhibitions at Paris’ Centre Pompidou have been by women. At the Whitney and the Tate Modern, female solo shows have made up under 30 percent of the solo shows at those locations since 2007.