Page 22 - Buzz Magazine - Issue No 2 Winter 2021 | University of Rochester

A RT S +
C ULT UR E

Up Art, Activism,

and the AIDS Poster
Against

the Wall

EXHIBIT WILL SHOWCASE POSTERS FROM THE RIVER CAMPUS

LIBRARIES’ AIDS EDUCATION COLLECTION

his spring, the University’s Memorial Art
T Gallery, in collaboration with the River
Campus Libraries (RCL), will present Up Against
the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster. The
exhibition will showcase approximately 200 of the
most visually arresting and socially meaningful
examples from the University’s AIDS Education
Collection donated by Dr. Edward C. Atwater. RCL’s
Department of Rare Books, Special Collections,
and Preservation is home to the collection of about
8,000 posters—one of the world’s largest visual
resources of its kind related to the disease.

The posters, spanning from 1982 to the present,
show how social, religious, civic, and public health
agencies have addressed the controversial, often
contested, terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within
the public realm. Organizations and creators

21 | UNIVERSITY OF ROCHES TER BUZZ MA G AZINE