AIDS Epidemic Given Visual Form

As part of campus commemoration of World AIDS Day yesterday, Philip L. Yenawine—the co-founder of Visual Understanding in Education, an art education initiative—spoke about artistic responses to the AIDS epidemic at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

The lecture, entitled “Seeing AIDS,” was given in conjunction with a Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts exhibit called “ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993.” The exhibit, which has been on display since mid-October, showcases posters, stickers, and other visual media that were used in the political discourse about AIDS during that period.

The subject was personal for Yenawine, who worked as director of education at the Museum of Modern Art from 1983 to 1993—during the height of the AIDS epidemic.

“I’m revisiting a time not as a scholar, but as one still haunted by an experience,” said Yenawine, referencing the deaths of friends and loved ones from AIDS.

Yenawine developed the idea of “A Day Without Art,” which began on Dec. 1, 1989, as a day when museums would close or conceal certain works in order to reflect on the impact of AIDS on the art community.

“It is a privilege to have a speaker of this caliber who is willing to share some of these stories of how artists have contributed to social change” in response to AIDS, said M. Ray Williams, director of education at the Harvard Art Museum.

Artists in the late 80s and early 90s used their politically-charged work to turn the virus into something that could be discussed in the general public, Yenawine said.

Audience members said they were moved by Yenawine’s personal experiences.

“It didn’t fit into what the conventional idea of a talk is,” said Martha A. “Martabel” Wasserman ’10, who is writing a senior thesis on the “ACT UP” exhibition.

Several student groups also commemorated World AIDS Day. The Harvard College Global Health and AIDS Coalition rallied yesterday for AIDS-related funding in front of Senator John Kerry’s Boston office. And tonight, the Health and AIDS Coalition and Queer Students and Allies will host a candlelight vigil in front of Memorial Church, illuminate a ribbon in front of Grays Hall, and hold a discussion on gay men’s health and Brazilian immigrants living in Boston in an event co-sponsored by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.

“The theme of World AIDS Day this year is universal access,” QSA co-chair Marco Chan ’11 said. “We need to look at different ways to conduct outreach so that everyone has access [to treatment].”