Graphic Gift
Posted on May 25, 2012 by A&U in Noteworthy
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University (FIU) in Miami Beach, Florida, is the recipient of a recent donation of over 3,600 AIDS-themed posters created between 1985 and 2010. Amassed from over eighty countries, including Australia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, India, and the United States, the significant collection of posters will enhance The Wolfsonian’s growing holdings on health and hygiene. [...]
Remembering Chris Companik
Posted on May 24, 2012 by A&U in Noteworthy
Illustrator and comic strip writer Chris Companik died from AIDS-related complications on March 23. Chris held his memories dear. In our back-and-forth correspondence, since A&U started running his established strip, “HIV + Me” in 2003, the Chicago-born “Chrisco,” as his friends called him, would often share a memory of running into this or that celebrity [...]
Art Belongs to Us
Posted on May 23, 2012 by A&U in Gallery
Fashion Blogger Richard Haines Talks to Lester Strong About the Consolations of Beauty and Art in the Age of AIDS Visit the fashion capitals of the world—New York, Paris, or Milan, for example—during their fashion weeks and you may well find fashion illustrator extraordinaire Richard Haines hard at work sketching the men’s collections of various [...]
Enchanting Evening
Posted on May 21, 2012 by A&U in Music, Dance & Theater, The Arts
Through Music and Composers Who Created It, a New Film Tells the Story of the AIDS Crisis by Chip Alfred It began with a chance meeting between two of the most unlikely collaborators. When eccentric seventy-something New York pianist Mimi Stern-Wolfe met exuberant twenty-something Australian filmmaker Rohan Spong, their futures were about to change. After [...]
Radiant Artist
Posted on May 4, 2012 by A&U in Flashback
May 4 marks the birthday of Keith Haring, one of the most prolific and popular artists to take on AIDS awareness. In 2008, Lester Strong wrote about Haring’s work and a new book on the artist that had been recently published. A New Book Celebrates the Art and Life of AIDS Acivist Keith Haring by Lester [...]
Read My Lips
Posted on April 29, 2012 by A&U in Gallery
The First Retrospective of Gran Fury Reminds that Kissing Doesn’t Kill (Greed and Indifference Do) by Angela Leroux-Lindsey In November 1989, New York Archbishop John O’Connor opened the first Vatican conference on AIDS by declaring “The truth is not in condoms or clean needles. These are lies…good morality is good medicine.” An incendiary statement: implicit in [...]
Journeys Through Darkness
Posted on April 26, 2012 by A&U in Positively Literary
Journeys Through Darkness by Alina Oswald CreateSpace Reviewed by Chip Alfred To put it simply, Kurt Weston’s story is a writer’s dream. Having endured more than his share of nightmares, Weston, a long-term AIDS survivor and legally blind photographer, is an inspiration to anyone confronted with seemingly insurmountable obstacles to overcome. In a new biography, [...]
The End Was Near
Posted on March 21, 2012 by A&U in Gallery
MCA Chicago’s “This Will Have Been” Revisits the Political Urgency of the 1980s by Larry Buhl In the 2010 film Hot Tub Time Machine, one character scoffs at nostalgia for the 1980s: “We had, like, Reagan and AIDS.” The line was meant as a joke, though for many sick and dying Reagan’s lack of response to [...]
We Are Still Here!
Posted on January 17, 2012 by A&U in Gallery
GMHC’s “Art & AIDS: 30 Years” Celebrates the Power of Art in the Epidemic by Angela Leroux-Lindsey On the eve of World AIDS Day, the Leslie/Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York hosted an opening reception for “Art & AIDS: 30 Years,” a gallery exhibit featuring a stunning array of work produced [...]
Staying Connected
Posted on July 25, 2011 by A&U in Gallery
Curator John Chaich and Visual AIDS team up together in the show Mixed Messages to remind us that apathy is no cure for aids by Lester Strong The use of text as visual art has a distinguished past: Hebrew and Islamic art, medieval illuminated manuscripts, post-World War I Russian Constructivism are a few examples that [...]
