A program for an exhibition organized by Daniel Cornell at the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1995 to coincide with the Day Without Art on December 1, World AIDS Day. Today, Visual AIDS prefers to emphasize the people, especially artists, who are living with HIV and AIDS. Day Without Art has become Day With Art, reflecting the organization’s hard work over the last two decades to bring focus to artists living with HIV. While we applaud these efforts, we also wonder if a Day of remembering (a day without art) can actually help (not take away from) those efforts. By not addressing the cause of the lacuna that exists in art today (the dearth of curators, writers, artists who would be leading the field), by not giving it a name, by not repeating the names of those we have lost, do we not just disentangle the pandemic from our history, from our longings and desire and further marginalize the people who live under this plague’s shadow?
EK Accession # 21226