Eight-artist exhibit explores HIV/AIDS impact

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Eight artists have work on display in the Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries exhibition, "POSITIVE: Art and Aids." The show runs through Nov. 11.

The show is a subset of "A Deeper Dive," recently exhibited at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York. "POSITIVE: Art and Aids" explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on American art from a diverse mix of LGBTQ artists, as well as their friends and allies, demonstrating how artists with various gender and sexual identities responded to the HIV/AIDS epidemic through making art.

The exhibit is part of Purdue Student Union Board's and LGBTQ Center's HIV/AIDS Awareness.

Co-curator Jonathan D. Katz will lead guided tours of the exhibition at 12:20, 2:45 and 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday (Nov. 8). At 6:30 p.m. that day, Katz will give a public lecture titled "How AIDS Changed American Art" at the Carole and Gordon Mallett Theatre in Yue-Kong Pao Hall.

The show will feature work by eight artists: Lawrence Broze, Brian Buczak, John Dugdale, Jimmy DeSana, Karen Finley, Glenn Ligon, Ann P. Meredith and Anthony Viti. Each artist represented expresses themes such as emotion, intimacy, death and life.

Katz is a pioneering figure in the development of LGBTQ art history. He is president of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. He is the director of the doctoral program in visual studies at State University of New York at Buffalo. He was also the first tenured faculty in gay and lesbian studies in the United States. Co-curator Andrew Barron is a Ph.D. student in visual studies at University of Buffalo.

The Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries are housed in Yue-Kong Pao Hall, 552 W. Wood St.

Writer: Howard W. Hewitt, 765-494-9541, hhewitt@purdue.edu

Source: Liz Erlewine, eerlewin@purdue.edu