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Pussy Riot Have Announced Plans to Open a Women-Only Museum

The core idea is simple: it will be made by women and be about women, with only female curators and administrators and displaying only female artists.

Never ones to shy away from grabbing the human rights issues of today by the shoulders, shaking them and then giving them a good smack, Pussy Riot's Maria Alyokhina has announced plans in an interview with Artnet, for her and other Pussy Riot activists to create a women-only museum.

It will be called the New Balkan Women's Museum, and plans are for it to be located in Montenegro. The core idea is simple: it will be made by women and be about women, with only female curators and administrators and displaying only female artists. Whether the choice of Montenegro is symbolic of the cause is unknown, however gender equality has become a burning issue there in recent years.

The idea isn't one that comes without cause and context. As Flavorwire reported, although 42.6 percent of museums are run by women, they are often given much lower budgets than those run by men, and the salary is noticeably less. Only 16 percent of shows at the Pompidou in Paris and 25 percent at London's Tate Modern have been devoted to women artists since 2007. While female fine art graduates total more than men, only six women have won the Turner prize in the last 30 years.

The museum is all part of Pussy Riot's initiative to broaden their activism and tackle newer issues, like their work on raising the awareness of police brutality in recent videos, and now, as this museum suggests, gender equality in the arts world. In an interview with Noisey back in November, they also revealed plans to head to Calais to help build shelters for refugees at the beginning of 2016.

Basically, we're going to be seeing a hell of lot more of Pussy Riot next year. As member Nadya Tolokkonikova told us last month: "We are planning to release a lot of disturbing videos next year, we hope that you will not like them."