Shhhh, listen.

Is that cracking you hear the sound of a glass ceiling beginning to shatter?

Consider: This month a woman won the Oscar for best director and this year the Whitney Biennial has more women than men. Last May, Carnegie Museum of Art appointed its first female director.

It wasn't so long ago that women were on the outside of the art world looking in. And it wasn't so long ago that, provoked by a 1985 Museum of Modern Art international survey show that included only 13 women among 169 artists, the Guerrilla Girls began agitating for better representation of women in the visual arts.

But are things really that much better today?

"Things are as good as they've ever been for women artists at the emerging level," said Frida Kahlo, a founding member and still one of the most active of the Guerrilla Girls, the feminist art collective that travels the United States and Europe, shooting arrows barbed with humor and sarcasm at art world institutions.

Frida Kahlo isn't her real name, of course. All of the Guerrilla Girls -- almost 100 have participated over the years -- decided early on they would remain anonymous (and protect their art careers) by donning gorilla masks for public appearances and taking the names of dead female artists. The real Kahlo was the 20th-century Mexican painter whose daring, introspective work was embraced by later generations of feminist artists.

This Frida Kahlo, and maybe one of her cohorts, will appear at 7 p.m. Friday at Pittsburgh CAPA's theater in a show designed to raise awareness of how women and people of color are progressing -- or not -- in the visual arts.

"We do a kind of enlightened slide presentation about the work we've done over the last 25 years," Frida Kahlo said last week over the phone from Las Cruces, N.M., where she and Guerrilla Girl Kathe Kollwitz (named for the German painter and sculptor) were appearing that evening at New Mexico State University. Tomorrow night, they'll be at California University of Pennsylvania, kicking off its Conference on Arts and Activism.

At CAPA, "we'll do a little skit with the audience and answer questions, and we do it all in jungle drag. We try to inspire people to think about how they can be activists in their own life."

The Guerrilla Girls' work includes lectures, performances and workshops at colleges and universities; four (soon to be five) books; many billboards, sandwich boards, posters and bumper stickers in the U.S., Europe and China; and a Web site, www.guerrillagirls.com.

CAPA visual arts coordinator Valerie Westcott, a longtime friend of Frida Kahlo's, said she invited her to do a benefit for the school because she doesn't want her students to be "blindsided when they go to college." The event will raise money for the school's visual arts programs.

Things have changed for women artists over the years, Frida Kahlo said. Today, "you can't have a gallery stable show or museum show without having a women or artist of color. But if you only have one, you have tokenism."

And as women artists start to climb the success ladder, many still find themselves pushing up on that transparent layer through which elite opportunities are visible but just out of reach.

"Things just aren't that good for women artists when it comes to having solo shows, getting into museum and private collections and reselling at auction, where women are pulling five to 10 cents on the dollar to men," Frida Kahlo said. "Every time you turn around, discrimination and prejudice take a different form and flavor, some conscious, some unconscious."

Brainstormers, an art collective founded in 2005 by four members of a younger generation of women artists, has been running the numbers. This year, among 29 top New York galleries, their stables of artists range from 76 percent to 96 percent male.

For several years art critic Jerry Saltz, writing in the Village Voice, New York magazine and on his Facebook page, has complained about the number of works by women artists in MoMA's permanent collection galleries, finding in 2006 that of 399 works only 19 -- or 5 percent -- were by women. In 2007, that figure was 3.5 percent and last May, 4 percent.

"MoMA is telling a story of modernism that only it believes," he wrote.

In December, ARTnews magazine's cover story, titled "The Feminist Evolution," acknowledged the disparities uncovered by Mr. Saltz and the Brainstormers. But it took a more sanguine view, suggesting that 2007 may prove to be a watershed for female artists. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opened that year at the Brooklyn Museum, one of a "flurry of feminist events and art shows" focusing on the impact of women in contemporary art.

"Whether 2007 was a turning point or things have finally reached critical mass, the outlook for women is improving," Phoebe Hoban wrote.

Despite its macho reputation, the Pittsburgh region historically has had women in leadership positions -- as artists, teachers, gallery owners, philanthropists and museum curators and directors.

Yet women artists lag far behind at the city's largest and most prominent cultural institution. In its 1973 catalog of the collection, Carnegie Museum of Art included only 25 women among 416 artists. In its 1985 collection handbook, just five of 130 artists, designers or craftspeople were women. The most recent handbook, from 1995, includes seven women among 130 artists.

"I'm just doing a new handbook and you make me want to count," said the museum's new director, Lynn Zelevansky. "If you're going to count pre-war [World War II], it becomes very difficult."

Or, as Mr. Saltz wrote, "Obviously, MoMA can't invent modern masters and new Cubists."

But "if you're looking 1970 or 1960 on, you ought to be able to do better," Ms. Zelevansky said. "It's been easier for each succeeding generation."

Yet when it comes to solo and two-person shows between 1999 and the present -- the time frame of exhibits posted on its Web site -- Carnegie Museum's galleries hosted 43 male artists, architects or photographers and only seven female ones.

Ms. Zelevansky groaned when she heard those numbers.

"That's bad," she said.

She had a similar reaction on hearing that of the 39 artists in the last Carnegie International, only 12 were women.

Will having a woman at the helm make a difference?

"It's certainly something I always think about and do ask people to think about," she said. "At the same time I don't believe in dictating to my curators but I do ask people to be conscious of it. I grew up with feminism so with me it's second nature. It isn't a question.

"But I'm not saying it shouldn't be more forceful than it's been. We can be stronger about it than we are."

A 2006 Brainstormers survey showed that women make up more than half of all master of fine arts candidates at 14 New York-area schools.

"So we're educating women to be artists but not giving them professional opportunities," Frida Kahlo said. Imagine the outcry, she added, if women who went to medical school weren't allowed to become doctors.

Such stats are what keep the Guerrilla Girls going, taking aim at museums and galleries and donning what Kathe Kollwitz has called their "mask-ulinity," the hairy head of the largest living primate.

Which, come to think of it, must be awfully heavy and hot.

"You get used to it," Frida Kahlo said. "And you'd be surprised what comes out of your mouth when you're wearing a gorilla mask. Try it."

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