Help Visual AIDS raise $100,000 by World AIDS Day—December 1—to expand our office and archive, the largest research collection on HIV-positive artists.

The Visual AIDS archive originated in a moment of crisis, formed by people getting together and doing something to preserve the cultural legacy of their loved ones. Since its founding in 1994 by Frank Moore and David Hirsh, the archive has now grown into a vital, comprehensive resource across seven collections and 30 linear feet, alongside an Artist File documenting work from more than 500 living artists and estates.

From the beginning, the Visual AIDS Artist Files have been open to any and all self-identified HIV-positive artists. For many artists in our collection, these files are the only remaining record of their lives and work.

Now we are setting our most ambitious year-end fundraising goal to date to support the expansion of the Visual AIDS archive and office. We are ready to triple our collections in the next two years with the acquisitions of new writings, correspondences, tapes, and ephemera—material that will deepen the stories we can tell of artists’ lives and their communities. With newly dedicated space for research and exhibition, our office expansion makes possible more class visits, research fellowships, and educational experiences. Our recent growth to a full-time staff of 5 gives us the capacity to process and promote engagement with the archive more continuously—ensuring these materials don’t wait years in a backlog.

Crucially, the archive and office expansion responds to a need of this particular moment. More than 40 years into the AIDS pandemic, the oldest generation of HIV survivors—and the lovers, friends, and families of those who have been lost—are reaching the end of their lives. So much of their material is passing now to Visual AIDS because of profound trust in our community’s record of care, our expansive vision of who counts as artist and scholar, and the ongoing connections we draw to the stakes of the present.

We continue to live in a world shaped by HIV and AIDS. With funding cuts to PEPFAR and USAID, rising AIDS denialism, and a broader desensitization to violent and preventable death, HIV remains a central way to understand the seriousness of what happens when we look away. The artists in the Visual AIDS archive offer vital models today for seeing, speaking, and acting within crisis.

Support the Visual AIDS archive and office expansion today to ensure this work reaches the many individuals who need it—artists, curators, educators, scholars, healthcare workers, advocates, and people who aren't yet thinking about HIV. We all live in world shaped by HIV and AIDS, and we all have a part in shaping what comes next.

Image Credit: David Hirsh interviewing John Dugdale, 1994. Photograph by Eric Rhein.

Support the Expansion of the Visual AIDS Archive and Office

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