Don’t Mourn, Consecrate: A Long Table Discussion on Pandemics, Public Art, and History

Join NYU Special Collections, writer and organizer Theodore Kerr, and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery for a discussion centering the AIDS-related art installation Don’t Mourn, Consecrate by artist Juan González (Born 1942, Cuba; Died 1993, New York City), who died of complications linked to AIDS. One of the first public artworks to engage with the AIDS crisis in the US, this installation filled the street-front windows of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery from September to October 1987, predating the New Museum’s landmark exhibition, Let the Record Show, by two months.

This event will present information about González and the installation, and discussants Carlos Motta (visual artist), Melanie Kress (Senior Curator, Public Art Fund), and Samuel Ernest (doctoral candidate, Yale University) will set Don’t Mourn, Consecrate within a larger conversation about HIV/AIDS, illness, public art, identity, and memorialization. The Long Table format will allow audience members to contribute their knowledge and perspectives. What conversations about faith, activism, and mortality become ever more possible through the power of González’s work and the context in which it was made and first exhibited?

Registration via Eventbrite and the NYU Libraries homepage events list will be available closer to the event. Audience members without an active NYU ID must register to attend.

This event is free & open to the public. RSVP is required for audience members without an active NYU ID.

For more information, please contact NYU Special Collections at special.collections@nyu.edu.