“My AIDS won’t fit in your museum,” read Shan Kelley’s work, “With Curators Like These, Who Needs A Cure.”
After this image lingered for a few seconds in the darkened Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) Dumke Auditorium, the screen changed to “39 million people have died of AIDS-related causes.” This compilation of facts and images is RADIANT PRESENCE, a digital slideshow created by the Visual AIDS’ Artist+ Registry to celebrate the work of artists living with HIV/AIDS and those who have died from it.
The five minute-long film was just one of the UMFA’s events for the Day With(out) Art, an international event that coincides with World AIDS Day where more than 8,000 museums, galleries, libraries and other institutions work to raise awareness for the disease.
Whitney Tassie, curator of modern and contemporary art at the museum, said this is not the first year they’ve participated in the event; the museum often covers one work of art with a black cloth, but this is the first time there have been so many events.
“We’re proud to be among thousands of art institutions nationwide bringing attention to the AIDS crisis,” Tassie said, “especially since part of our mission is to inspire critical dialogue and illuminate the role of art in people’s lives.”
Upstairs in the museum’s main gallery, the bronze sculpture “The Scout,” which depicts an American Indian on a horse, was covered by a thick, black cloth. Tassie said this was selected because it’s in a gallery that gets a lot of visitors and noticeability would have a greater impact on guests.
Katie Vogt, who was visiting the UMFA during the event, said the museum’s participation in World AIDS Day, combining art and people’s physical well-being, is “wonderful.”
She works in ambulances and has encountered patients who are HIV-positive or have AIDS, which she said helped her more fully understand the disease and the people living with it.
“There’s so many different ways to take care of these issues,” Vogt said. “What I think is awesome is that it’s also kind of a form of therapy — art and music. Not necessarily physical healing, but somebody with a deadly disease or an illness or AIDS pouring out into art or alternative therapies can be really healing for some people.”
AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a disease that causes the body’s immune system to decline, severely lowering the resistance to infection and disease and occurs when HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is left untreated, which is the initial infection that also lowers the body’s immune system. HIV is primarily transmitted through sexual contact, exposure to infected body fluids or tissues, and from mother to child. People cannot acquire AIDS or HIV through contact with a person’s sweat, tears or vomit, unless they are contaminated with blood. There is currently no cure.
Tassie said one of the museum’s primary goals was to educate people about the prevalence of AIDS and HIV worldwide and how it’s changed over time. For example, she said, more than half of the people living with HIV today are over 50 years old, women of color are 20 times more likely to contract HIV than white women, and transgender women are one of the fastest-growing populations of HIV-positive people in the United States.
The UMFA also hosted tours featuring selected objects on display dealing with sex and consent, representation of bodies and family and gender identity, such as the marble statue “Leda and the Swan” and a bust of Durga located in the Indian Art collection.
The day closed at 6 p.m. with a free lecture from guest speaker Jason Atwood, a 28-year-old gay man from the Utah AIDS Foundation’s speaker’s bureau who is HIV-positive. The UMFA also partnered with Planned Parenthood for the event.
@Ehmannky