Can a Sculpture Help Solve an Epidemic?
World AIDS Day Is a Reminder of Art’s Power to Save Lives
Twenty-five years ago, I was foraging through a museum bookstore and came upon an eye-catching title: AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism. The word “AIDS,” rendered on the cover in large font, seemed more than slightly dangerous in 1988, when so many lay sick and dying and there were no effective treatments on the horizon. Equally attention-grabbing was the book’s cover photograph of of Let the Record Show …, a 1987 art installation in the front window of Manhattan’s New Museum of Contemporary Art by the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT …
