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 AIDS was a defining aspect of the period. Another defining aspect: art about AIDS. In an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, HIV/AIDS is a dominant theme, [...]

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 come to mind. Curator John Chaich has updated that tradition into our contemporary world, placing it in an AIDS context, in a recent (June 2 through July 3) exhibition for [...]

Left Field by Patricia Nell Warren As the recent censorship of an AIDS-themed film reminds, the separation of church & state is a thin line. By now, most of the world knows that David Wojnarowicz’s short film A Fire in My Belly was blasted by religious righters at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery LGBT-themed exhibition in Washington, D.C. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), wasn’t explicit about his religious motives, complaining merely that the film was an act of “arrogance” with taxpayer money (though the show [...]