HIV and AIDS

On display at the Memorial Art Gallery through June 19, the first major exhibition of the University’s AIDS Education Posters highlights the role of poster art during the global epidemic.

For decades, Edward Atwater ’50, a professor emeritus of medicine at the Medical Center, has collected medical history artifacts. In 2007, he began turning his collection of more than 8,000 AIDS education posters over to the University and it is now the world’s largest single collection of visual resources related to AIDS and HIV.

“I knew I had it,” says Linda Dudman of the University Health Service. “I knew it was a very important item to keep, but I never quite knew what to do with it.” Now the 12-foot square panel will be on display through February and finds a new home in River Campus Libraries.

Haytham Abdelhakim '20 and Ashley Tenesaca '20 stop to look at a panel signed by University of Rochester students, faculty, and staff in 1994 when it accompanied the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt that had been displayed in Goergen Athletic Center. The panel had been saved by Linda Dudman, the associate director of health promotion at the University Health Service; Dudman has donated the panel to River Campus Libraries, where it is now on display.

School of Medicine and Dentistry-trained physician Michael Gottlieb launched a new chapter in medical history with his discovery of AIDS in the spring of 1981.

Founded by University of Rochester students in 1971, the Empty Closet is one of the oldest continuously published LGBT papers in the United States. Its pages reflect the story of the AIDS epidemic.

The AIDS Education Poster Collection, housed in the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections and Preservation, is the world’s largest single online collection of visual resources related to the disease.

Although AIDS is no longer the subject of his work, art and cultural critic Douglas Crimp—the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History and a professor of visual and cultural studies—played a central scholarly role in the first two decades of the AIDS crisis.

LaRon Nelson, assistant professor of nursing and associate director of international research at the University’s Center for AIDS Research, discusses how Johnson's announcement changed public perceptions and how far have we come since then in addressing the HIV/AIDS public health crisis.

Michael Gottlieb '73M (MD), examines AIDS awareness posters that are part of the AIDS Education Posters Collection, a collection of more than 6,500 AIDS education posters from around the world. Gottlieb, a graduate of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, was the first to identify the disease that would come to be known as AIDS.