Acting Up

Ignorance = Fear/Silence = Death, a print by Keith Haring, 1989.

From Keith Haring posters to anti–Reagan advertisements, an exhibition collects the works of graphic design that shaped New York’s grassroots response to the AIDS epidemic

By Joel Lobenthal

“I never saw such fear in a room in my life,” the fashion designer Stan Herman told me, recalling a 1981 gathering of prominent gay men at author Larry Kramer’s Manhattan apartment. A medical professional was educating the guests about the sexually transmitted infection that was killing their friends. That condition would soon be known as “AIDS.” In 1986, the virus that caused it was named “H.I.V.” Over the next 20 years, the scourge of AIDS—Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome—would exceed even the most dire predictions. READ ON