World Aids Day 2009

Hunter Reynolds, I'm in Love (Lipstick Drawing series), 2009. Courtesy Visual Aids.

Thirty-three million people are HIV positive; 22 million of them are in Africa. Worldwide, HIV/AIDS is the No. 1 killer of women.

Today is World Aids Day/Day With(out) Art:

Day Without Art began on December 1, 1989 as the national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. To make the public aware that AIDS can touch everyone, and inspire positive action, some 800 U.S. art and AIDS groups participated in the first Day Without Art, shutting down museums, sending staff to volunteer at AIDS services, or sponsoring special exhibitions of work about AIDS. Since then, Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

A number of art programs are taking place across New York City in conjunction with World Aids Day; visit the Visual Aids blog for more information.

Every year, the non-profit organization Visual Aids commissions contemporary artists to design broadsides; the works are used to raise awareness about AIDS and HIV prevention. This year's designs are a limited-edition tote bag by J. Morrison; a set of 10 business cards by Wu Ingrid Tsang; and the postcard pictured here by Hunter Reynolds. An AIDS activist and early member of ACT UP, Reynolds co-founded Art Positive--a group to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts--in 1989.