I experienced the U.S. AIDS epidemic of the 80s and early 90s mostly as an observer. The disease took my 9th grade English teacher and, later, a coworker. I remember ubiquitous safe-sex campaigns on campus and seeing men in their 30s and 40s, frail and wasting, being wheeled by caregivers through Dupont Circle. And I remember friends nervously waiting out HIV tests after ill-advised episodes of unprotected sex.
Though the heated politics of the era had receded in my mind, it took one walk-through of the National Portrait Gallery’s Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture to bring it all back. Reagan denying the disease, Princess Diana shaking hands with AIDS patients, ACT UP protests–all of it.
Hide/Seek has generated controversy due to Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough’s unfortunate decision to pull a video from the show, but that didn’t interfere with my experience of it. The pieces reflecting the AIDS era are engaging, provocative, tragic. Keith Haring‘s Unfinished Painting (pictured) is particularly sad because it so poignantly represents what was lost to the disease, and too soon–the artist died at age 31.
Haring’s unique street-art genius is explored in the documentary, The Universe of Keith Haring, which I watched after my first visit to Hide/Seek. The film turned out to be a nice bookend to the exhibit. It provides a fascinating look at the downtown New York art scene of the early 80′s as well as an artist’s coming of age. Haring’s ebullience really shines through.
Hide/Seek runs through February 13, 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery.
