Apocalypse Sky: Art, AIDS, and Activism in New York City, 1982-1992

A Focus Gallery exhibition, Apocalypse Sky assembles from the Loeb's collection about twenty works by artists whose lives were transformed by the HIV/AIDS crisis during the 1980s and 1990s. For many of these artists, New York City’s “Downtown scene,” long a bohemian enclave, now staged a war zone. At the exhibition’s center is Apocalypse, a print portfolio of images and texts created by artist Keith Haring and writer William S. Burroughs in 1988, the year Haring was diagnosed with AIDS. Also on view are photographs by Nan Goldin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mark Morrisroe, and others; text-based media by Jenny Holzer and Zoe Leonard; documentary testimony and ephemera from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power); and a loan of Félix González-Torres’s untitled “spill sculpture,” composed of individually-wrapped candies evoke the weight of the artist’s partner, Ross Laycock, who died in 1991 from AIDS-related complications. Together these works call on us to think about the role of art across both cultural politics and the politics of remembering. Together they remind us too that the war is not over.

This exhibition was co-curated by Hiram Perez, Associate Professor of English, and Elizabeth Nogrady, the Loeb’s Curator of Academic Programs. Support was provided by the Mellon Foundation. There are works that appeared in this exhibition that were loans to the Loeb and therefore do not appear on this website.