About this Event
Join Visual AIDS to celebrate the launch of Absence/Presence: 30 Years of Day Without Art, a new publication tracing three decades of cultural institutions mobilizing in response to the AIDS crisis.
The afternoon will bring together former Visual AIDS staff and contributors to the book for a series of short conversations spanning the history of Day Without Art. Editors Kyle Croft and Risa Puleo will reflect on the project’s emergence and its first decade; Amy Sadao and Nelson Santos will discuss its evolution through the 2000s; and Ted Kerr and Elizabeth Koke will consider Day Without Art from the 2010s to the present. Together, the conversations will reflect on the people who sustained the project, and how its strategies have changed alongside the AIDS epidemic.
Books will be available for purchase at the event. is also available for preorder online through Visual AIDS Store.
About the Book
This landmark volume resurfaces the history of Day Without Art, a day of action and mourning in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis, organized by Visual AIDS and observed by thousands of museums, universities and galleries since 1989. Conceived amid the culture wars of the late 1980s, Day Without Art marked a decisive shift in how art institutions understood their social and political responsibilities, calling on them to confront the AIDS crisis publicly. What began as a call for institutions to close or remove artworks—using absence to give presence to the losses of the AIDS crisis—quickly evolved into a networked platform for socially engaged art, ranging from posters and stickers to net art, public projections and national television broadcasts.
Spanning more than 300 pages, this publication brings together a chorus of critical essays, firsthand reflections and previously unpublished archival material documenting three decades of Visual AIDS’ artistic commissions and institutional collaborations. Together, these contributions offer long-overdue recognition of the labor and political negotiation behind the program, demonstrating the significance of Day Without Art within histories of institutional critique and social practice.
Event venue & nearby stays
Housing Works Bookstore, 126 Crosby Street, New York, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.