Events

view times

As a precursor to Day With(out) Art on December 1, Gallery 400 hosts two programs aimed at examining the ongoing AIDS crisis in the present and the future.

3pm: Join Gallery 400 for final presentation by students of UIC’s Gender and Women’s Studies Course “AIDS Politics and Culture.”

4pm: Faculty from UIC’s Gender and Women Studies department and the School of Public Health hold a conversation on the potential cuts to HIV/AIDS funding in the U.S.

About Day With(out) Art: Dr. Jennifer Brier, director of UIC’s Gender and Women Studies department, and Dr. Faith Fletcher, associate professor in the School of Public Health hold a conversation on the potential cuts to HIV/AIDS funding in the U.S.

In 1989 in response to the worsening AIDS crisis and coinciding with the World Health Organization’s second annual World AIDS Day on December 1, Visual AIDS organized the first Day Without Art. A Visual AIDS committee of art workers (curators, writers, and art professionals) sent out a call for “mourning and action in response to the AIDS crisis” that would celebrate the lives and achievements of lost colleagues and friends; encourage caring for all people with AIDS; educating diverse publics about HIV infection; and finding a cure. More than 800 arts organizations, museums and galleries throughout the U.S. participated by shrouding artworks and replacing them with information about HIV and safer sex, locking their doors or dimming their lights, and producing exhibitions, programs, readings, memorials, rituals, and performances. Day Without Art is now an international collaborative project in which more than 8,000 museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS service organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part. .