Beginning in the 1980s, a global pandemic led graphic designers and artists to rethink how they communicate safety, community, caution, and risk to the general masses. We at the Wolfsonian Public Humanities Lab (WPHL) have collaborated with The Wolfsonian—FIU to bring you Messages from a Pandemic: AIDS Graphic Communication, a digital exhibition that showcases how designers from around the world communicated public health information about HIV and AIDS. As the world faces yet another global pandemic in the form of the novel coronavirus, this exhibition, which is free and available to all, is as urgent now as ever.
Messages from a Pandemic is curated by Dr. Julio Capó, Jr., WPHL’s Deputy Director, and Shoshana Resnikoff, curator at The Wolfsonian—FIU, and is drawn from the museum’s one-of-a-kind collection of nearly 4,000 AIDS posters.