Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, 26 Wooster St, New York, NY

An Army of Lovers: ART+ Artists in Conversation

ART+Positive was an influential affinity group of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP) / New York, responding to government neglect of the AIDS crisis and the conservative homophobia and censorship of the Culture Wars. ART+Positive’s collective aesthetic embodied a “militant eroticism” centering queer sexuality and raw, powerful freedom of expression.

An Army of Lovers: ART+Positive Artists In Conversation will feature members of the artist / activist collective including Aldo Hernández, Lola Flash and Dennis Davidson, to discuss their impactful art and political actions. Images and dialogue will highlight ART+Positive’s anti-Jesse Helms protest on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1989; their collective exhibitions, including “An Army Of Lovers: Combatting AIDS, Homophobia and Censorship” at PS122 in 1990; and their collaborative large-scale Positive Flag, Negative Flag, 1990, among other agitprop projects.

The intergenerational event is organized by Alex Fialho and moderated by Vivian Crockett, and will also include comments by the steward of the ART+Positive archives Dr. Daniel Berger, to celebrate the publication of Militant Eroticism: The ART+Positive Archives, edited by Berger and John Neff and published by Sternberg Press in 2017.