The South Campus Library is currently hosting a six-panel traveling exhibition – Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture – from May 11, 2015, through June 20, 2015. This banner exhibit explores the rise of AIDS in the early 1980s and the evolving response to the epidemic over the last 30 years.

The title “Surviving and Thriving” comes from a book written in 1987 by and for people with AIDS that insisted people could live with AIDS, not just die from it. Jennifer Brier, the exhibition curator, explains that “centering the experience of people with AIDS in the exhibition allows us to see how critical they were, and continue to be, in the political and medical fight against HIV/AIDS.”

The banners present their stories alongside those of others involved in the national AIDS crisis, and they utilize a variety of historic photographs as well as images of pamphlets and publications to illustrate how a group of people responded to, or failed to respond, to HIV/AIDS.

The exhibit was produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.