AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism
Curator, Museum of the City of New York
May to October 2017
AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism examined how artists and activists have expanded the idea of caretaking and family and navigated the political stakes of domestic life in the face of the HIV/AIDS crisis, from the early 1980s to the present.
Entry to AIDS at Home featuring wallpaper adapted from Avram Finkelstein’s Worker’s Apartment (2013)
“Caretaking” section of AIDS at Home featuring Hugh Steers’s Bath Curtain (1992, foreground left)
“Housing” section of AIDS at Home featuring wallpaper and curtain adapted from Rafael Sánchez’s Untitled first painting (2002/2017)
“Family” section of AIDS at Home
“Family” section of AIDS at Home
A Place in the City, directed by Nate Lavey and Stephen Vider (2017), seen in AIDS at Home, featuring Kia LaBeija
From the earliest diagnoses, the HIV/AIDS epidemic spurred New Yorkers to create new forms of social support, identify new legal battles, and explore new artistic terrain. The exhibition placed paintings, photography, and film alongside archival objects from activist groups and support programs to uncover the private stories of HIV and AIDS and reconsider caretaking, community building, and making art as acts of resistance.
AIDS at Home included work by more than 20 artists—well-known, emerging, and newly discovered—including David Wojnarowicz, Nan Goldin, Kia LaBeija, Hunter Reynolds, Hugh Steers, Luna Luis Ortiz, Lori Grinker, Avram Finkelstein, Susan Kuklin, L.J. Roberts, and Chloe Dzubilo, as well as several activist and arts organizations.
Select Media Coverage
New Yorker
Washington Post
PBS Newshour
Hyperallergic
Public Seminar
Metrosource
Artforum
Vice
Youth Channel, Manhattan Neighborhood Network
Video Tour
Curator and Artist Tour with Visual AIDS
Credits
Photographs: Brad Farwell, Courtesy of MCNY
Curatorial Assistant: Becky Laughner
Exhibition Designer: Marissa Martonyi
Special thanks to Visual AIDS
Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York
Co-curator with Donald Albrecht, Museum of the City of New York, September 2016 to March 2017
Exhibition catalogue, Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York (Skira Rizzoli, 2016), 2017 Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBTQ non-fiction
Entry to Gay Gotham, first floor, 1910-1960
First floor, Gay Gotham, 1910-1960
First floor, Gay Gotham, 1910-1960
Entry to Gay Gotham, second floor, 1960-1995
Second floor, Gay Gotham, 1960-1995
Second floor, Gay Gotham, 1960-1995
Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York explored the creative networks of ten LGBT artists and the larger artistic worlds they shaped across the 20th century. It revealed an often-hidden side of the history of New York City and celebrated the power of artistic collaboration to transcend oppression.
Gay Gotham featured the work of artists including Andy Warhol, feminist artist Harmony Hammond, Harlem Renaissance painter and writer Richard Bruce Nugent, and transgender artist Greer Lankton. The exhibition showcased paintings and photographs, as well as letters, snapshots, and ephemera that illuminate their personal bonds.
An exhibition catalog, co-authored by Donald Albrecht and Stephen Vider, was published by Skira Rizzoli.
Select Media Coverage
Credits
Photographs: John Halpern, courtesy of MCNY
Curatorial Assistant: Becky Laughner
Exhibition Design: Joel Sanders Architecture and Pure & Applied
A Place in the City: Three Stories About HIV/AIDS at Home (2017)
Co-director with Nate Lavey
Originally produced for AIDS at Home, Museum of the City of New York
The documentary A Place in the City follows three activists to examine how HIV/AIDS plays out in the everyday lives of New Yorkers today and how community groups work to remake home as a space of caretaking, housing, and family.
The film was originally featured in the Museum of the City of New York's 2017 exhibition, AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism. The documentary has also been featured at NewFest, the New York LGBT Film Festival, in 2017; the LGBT Toronto Film Festival in 2018; the exhibition Queering Spaces, curated by Gil Mualem-Doron for SEAS (Socially Engaged Art Salon) in Brighton, England in 2021; and in public programs at The Broad, Los Angeles, and the Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey.
Featuring
Ted Kerr and What Would an HIV Doula Do?
Wanda Hernandez-Parks and VOCAL-NY
Kia LaBeija
Credits
Producer: Stephen Vider
Cinematography & editing: Nate Lavey
Graphic Designer: Marissa Martonyi
Sound Recorder: Nemo Allen
Music: Jonathan Zalben
Museum of the City of New York, 2017
Consulting
Vider has consulted on exhibitions and public programs for institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Historical Society, American LGBTQ+ Museum, and films and creative projects including Lavender Hill: A Love Story, a documentary directed by Austin Bunn, and a musical adaptation of Larry Mitchell’s novel Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, written and directed by Morgan Bassichis.