“Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010” Exhibition
Art Directors Club Gallery
This event has ended.
The Art Directors Club, the premier organization for creative people in integrated media and the first global collective of its kind, hosts the New York showing of Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010”.
The exhibition, organized by Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) and made possible at the ADC Gallery in part through support from Kenneth Cole, draws from an extensive archive of arresting and fearless international public health announcements. The show presents a comprehensive overview of the diverse visual strategies employed by government agencies, community activists, grassroots organizations, and motivated citizens to educate the local population.
From lands ranging from Papua New Guinea to Denmark, the posters demonstrate the different approaches used for discussion of a socially complex subject. The messages in Graphic Intervention (http://graphicintervention.org/) deftly champion pertinent sociopolitical issues—disease research and eradication, world health, international relations, sexual education, social prejudices and discrimination—in a remarkable way.
The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, is drawn largely from the collection of James Lapides, founder of the International Poster Gallery in Boston, with selections from MassArt’s poster archive. Lapides has spent the last decade collecting more than 3,000 HIV/AIDS from more than 80 countries. Curators Elizabeth Resnick, professor and chair, Graphic Design at MassArt, and Javier Cortés, partner and creative director at Korn Design in Boston and New York, narrowed the exhibition to 153 examples from 44 countries, each poster carefully navigating socially complex themes presenting a myriad of visual solutions to a public health crisis.
“The Art Directors Club is proud to host this remarkable exhibition,” said Brian Collins, chairman, chief creative officer at COLLINS:, New York and ADC vice president who helped organize the event. “It’s a cohesive selection of amazing ideas and diverse strategies employed by designers from around the world, each working within their own cultural perspective in response to AIDS as a public health emergency. In each country, messages to raise awareness and change behavior vary significantly to best serve the intended audience. These posters have played a crucial role in promoting awareness and safe sex education across cultures, and are powerful examples of how designers work to help make a better world for everyone.”
The opening week of the ADC exhibition coincides with the 2011 United Nations General Assembly High-Level Meeting on AIDS, June 8-10 in New York (www.unaids.org). A special guest representative from the UN organization will be on hand for the June 6 opening at the ADC Gallery: Egyptian actor and activist Amr Waked, who has been named Regional Goodwill Ambassador for the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
A popular film, television and stage actor best known to international audiences for his role in the film “Syriana” and recently featured in Vanity Fair for his involvement in the Egyptian uprisings, Waked is an influential figure with teenagers and adults across the region, and joins UNAIDS' commitment to speaking out against stigma and discrimination of people living with or affected by HIV.
Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010 has previously shown at MassArt in Boston and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and will travel to York College of Pennsylvania, York PA and the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) later this year.
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Schedule
from June 06, 2011 to July 29, 2011