Date/Time
Date(s) - Tuesday, December 3, 2019
12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Location
Mead Art Museum
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All are invited to a panel discussion on the cultural and political
impact of HIV/AIDS, featuring Amherst College Arts Librarian
Sara Smith, Queer Resource Center Director Jxhn Martin,
Conway Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow at Smith College
Museum of Art, Shanice Bailey, and the Director of A Positive
Place, Betsy Shally-Jensen, as well as local community members who are currently living with HIV/AIDs and survivors of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s.
This program is presented in conjunction with STILL BEGINNING: The 30th Annual Day With(out) Art and in collaboration with A Positive Place at Cooley Dickinson Health Care, the Smith College Museum of Art, the Amherst College Stonewall Committee, and the Queer Resource Center.
Free & open to all!
Tuesday, December 3, 2019 | 12–2 pm
Mead Art Museum
The Mead is proud to partner with Visual AIDS for the thirtieth annual Day With(out) Art by presenting STILL BEGINNING, a program of seven newly commissioned videos responding to the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic by Shanti Avirgan, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Carl George, Viva Ruiz, Iman Shervington, Jack Waters/Victor F.M. Torres, and Derrick Woods-Morrow.
The seven short videos range in subject from anti-stigma work in New Orleans to public sex culture in Chicago, highlighting pioneering AIDS activism and staging intergenerational conversations. Recalling Gregg Bordowitz’s reminder that “THE AIDS CRISIS IS STILL BEGINNING,”* the video program resists narratives of resolution or conclusion, considering the continued urgency of HIV/AIDS in the contemporary moment while revisiting resonant cultural histories from the past three decades.
Visual AIDS is a New York-based non-profit that utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. In 1989, Visual AIDS organized the first Day Without Art, a call to the art world for mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis. For Day With(out) Art’s thirtieth year, over 100 institutions worldwide will screen STILL BEGINNING, recognizing the important and necessary work of artists, activists, and cultural workers who have responded to AIDS while emphasizing the persistent presence of the epidemic. Visit www.visualaids.org to learn more.
*The phrase first appeared in Bordowitz’s installation Drive (2002) and was recently displayed as a banner at the Art Institute of Chicago.