Day Without Art boosts AIDS

Thursday, December 1, 1994

Day Without Art boosts AIDS

awareness

Art exhibits shrouded in memory of

AIDS-related deaths

By Rodney Tanaka

A walk through the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden today provides students with a sobering reminder of the impact of AIDS.

Sculptures are shrouded in observance of the sixth annual Day Without Art, a program uniting organizations worldwide for a day of mourning, remembrance and action for people affected by AIDS.

UCLA student organizations are commemorating the day with several events in addition to the shrouded sculptures as part of World AIDS Day, held annually on Dec. 1 as part of a national campaign aimed at educating the public about the disease.

This unified front against AIDS was developed by Visual AIDS, a volunteer organization of artists and art professionals using the power of the arts in the fight against the disease.

The organization came together in 1988 because "we kept meeting each other at memorial services and funerals," said Visual AIDS executive director Patrick O'Connell. "Our conversations were about trying to measure the immeasurable, the loss we were all experiencing."

Visual AIDS developed Day Without Art in 1989 to memorialize friends and colleagues and to address the social context of the illness. Initially involving 1,100 institutional participants, Day Without Art now involves 6,200 organizations worldwide.

"The art community is providing the media with a new way of talking about AIDS at least once a year," O'Connell said. "One of the messages we've tried to get across is that no one should be able to ignore the impact AIDS has had on the world."

Artwork by artists affected by AIDS are on display in the Kerckhoff Art Gallery until Dec. 16. The AIDS Vigil Parade, beginning at 11:45 a.m. at Westwood Plaza, will lead participants to Perloff Quad.

There, students can interact with guest speakers Henry Hopkins, chair of the UCLA Art Department, biology professor Roger Bohman and Glen Gaylord of AIDS Project Los Angeles.

Students can participate by wearing black clothes and red ribbons. Ribbons will be distributed all week on Bruin Walk between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Other activities include a candlelight vigil at 5:50 p.m. at the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, a free screening of Fear of Disclosure ­ five short documentary pieces created to promote AIDS awareness and education ­ and readings by Richard Howard at the Armand Hammer Museum.

"Day Without Art will make people aware that there is a great drain from this disease and that people need to support the research in finding a cure," said Irene Martin, exhibitions manager at the J. Paul Getty Museum, one of many art organizations participating in the event. "In the arts, especially the museum world, there have been very few of us who don't know someone personally who has died from the complications of AIDS."

The J. Paul Getty Museum will shroud several works and dedicate them to staff members and professional colleagues who have died because of AIDS-related complications.

The shrouded pieces at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Natural History will be accompanied by information pertaining to the work. "En Calavera: The Papier-Mâché Art of the Linares Family" will be enshrouded and will pay homage to Robert Childs, collections manager of Fowler who died of AIDS-related complications in 1989. Childs was responsible for building Fowler's Linares collection.

The Armand Hammer Museum offers free admission and red ribbons to visitors today to commemorate Day Without Art. The museum will feature a parking meter that plays recordings of artists and writers who are HIV-positive. When the meter runs out of money, the patron hears only silence.

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) is waiving admission during Day Without Art and will ask for donations to help fund AIDS projects. The museum will feature readings from the AIDS Project Los Angeles Creative Workshop and from Los Angeles artists.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will dim the galleries holding their permanent collection of contemporary art. Robert Longo's "Black Planet (for A.Z.)," a work dedicated to dancer and choreographer Arnie Zane, will be shrouded, and the lamps in Christian Boltanski's "Reliquary" will remain illuminated to symbolize hope for the future. Every 10 minutes a bell will toll in the museum's Times Mirror Central Court. Based on Centers for Disease Control statistics, each toll signifies one more death by AIDS.