ABOUT

The New School Archives and Special Collections contain a robust, though by no means complete, collection of artifacts that speak to the history of HIV/AIDS at The New School. Mentions of this crisis in the Archives’ digitized assets drops off by about 2007.

Importantly, there is an active community of witnesses, survivors, scholars, and artists within and beyond the university who can speak to this history and help to ground a crisis that has become abstract to many. Some of their stories are included below.

Juxtaposing the university’s artifacts with hearing memories spoken out loud, the exhibit AIDS at The New School: What is Remembered? strives to situate this sprawling crisis in a specific place, using it as a means to challenge the discourses that shape our perception of this school, its neighborhood, and the city whose “realities” we too often take at face value.