AIDS exhibit finds new life on the web

"Above + Beyond: Our Community Responds to HIV/AIDS," The History Project's acclaimed exhibit documenting the LGBT community's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the Boston area, has been retooled for the web. Its official launch will coincide with World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

"I think it's totally amazing what we were able to include from the original exhibit to the online exhibit," said Pat Gozemba, co-chair of The History Project. In its original incarnation, "Above + Beyond," which debuted in June 2006 at the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center, was a dramatic visual chronicle of the local LGBT community's 25-year battle against HIV/AIDS that included dramatic photos on 20 giant free-standing panels, newspaper clippings, early AIDS education and prevention posters, oral history from those who were on the frontline, and a block of the AIDS quilt. Much of the original photography, most of which is the work of Bay Windows photographer Marilyn Humphries, has been transferred to the web. Interviews with many of the major players, such as Kevin Cranston, currently the director of the Department of Public Health's HIV/AIDS Bureau, who has battled the epidemic in various public health positions since its beginning in the early 1980s, have been added to the online exhibit.

Gozemba worked to bring the exhibit to life in cyberspace with History Project volunteers Bruce Bell, Stewart Landers and Pat Ould, History Project board member Libby Bouvier and Karen Simon of the New York-based design outfit Simon Does. The project was made possible in part through funding from the Mass. Department of Public Health's HIV/AIDS Bureau and the Mass. Cultural Council.

In recognition of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1, The History Project will launch the virtual exhibit at a free event at Northeastern University's Behrakis Health Sciences Center, Room 10, from 5 to 7 p.m. on Nov. 30. The roster of guest speakers includes Hortensia Amaro, vice chair of the board of the Boston Public Health Commission, Cranston, Gary Daffin, executive director the Multi-Cultural AIDS Coalition and Grace Sterling Stowell, executive director of the Boston Alliance of GLBT Youth (BAGLY).

The idea to move "Above + Beyond" online stemmed from the enthusiasm the original exhibit generated among HIV/AIDS advocates after its debut last year. "They were so enthusiastic," said Gozemba, "that we felt that we really needed to preserve it and make it as accessible to as many people as possible." Additionally, she said, The History Project is well aware of the need "to start using new technology to reach both younger generations and to reach more people around the country and around the world."

Gozemba said The History Project is pleased to put the exhibit on the web and recognize those in the LGBT community who stepped up to fight the AIDS epidemic. She points to Cranston's comments in one of the exhibit interviews as emblematic of the community's response to the disease: "I get afraid that we will never get credit for something that's much more essential to being gay, which is that we stand by one another and I really know that to be true," Cranston says.

"That's what the HIV/AIDS crisis did," said Gozemba. "It really unified us in so many ways."

See' target='new'www.historyproject.org/AIDS_exhibit/AIDS_exhibit.html|See' target='new'>http://www.historyproject.org/AIDS_exhibit/AIDS_exhibit.html|See> the online exhibit

View' target='new'www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=features&sc3=&id=53050|View' target='new'>http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=features&sc3=&id=53050|View> a calendar of local World AIDS Day events