Gorilla masks, an anonymous group of proactive females and the art world — the possibilities are endless.

The Guerilla Girls, a group of women artists, writers, performers, filmmakers and arts professionals who claim to be the "conscience of culture," will speak at 7 p.m. today in the HUB-Robeson Center's Heritage Hall.

A question and answer session will be held at noon tomorrow in the Java Café of the Visual Arts Building.

The School of Visual Arts and Womyn's Concerns are sponsoring the event, which has been highly publicized in the College of Arts and Architecture, said Thomas McGovern, assistant director of the School of Visual Arts.

The Guerilla Girls began in 1985 after the Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted an exhibit that was supposed to display the best contemporary art in the world. Of the 169 artists, only 13 were women and none were minorities. Donning gorilla masks, the group protested the exhibit's lack of diversity.

Guerilla Girls consists of women, but according to its Web site, www.guerillagirls.com, they hope to include men soon.

"They are concerned with people in general and how people are treated. Women are spoken of more because they are women," said Erica Smith (senior-women's studies), a member of Womyn's Concerns.

The members of Guerilla Girls speak throughout the country at universities, museums and exhibits. Besides being socially concerned, they are politically active.

During the recent presidential election, they publicized negative aspects of President George W. Bush's term as governor of Texas.

Then they printed these findings and have been selling them as posters through their Web site.

They have designed more than 60 posters and have published two books.

The Guerilla Girls maintains its anonymity by wearing gorilla suits and using aliases during interviews. Most members use names of artists and writers who are already deceased, like Georgia O'Keeffe and Gertrude Stein.

"It is intriguing not knowing who they are. They bring to light the inequities in our discipline," McGovern said. "Everyone is excited about it, there is an enormous amount of respect for what they have done."

This anonymity is important for both career reasons and maintaining its purpose of social awareness.

"We were afraid that if we blew the whistle on some of its most powerful people, we could kiss off our art careers," said one guerilla girl. "But mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not our personalities or our own work." While the Guerilla Girls may have been more publicized in the '80s and early '90s, many feel that the members still hold a dominant presence.

"I don't think they are any less effective, it's market driven," McGovern said. "Believe me, if someone comes into your gallery wearing a gorilla mask, you know you did something wrong."