5:30-6 pm: Curator tour  
6-7:30 pm: Special screening and panel discussion

Blackness Brings Forth Life will be covered on Friday, December 1 until after the ACME Session. 

Every year since 1989, on or around World AIDS Day (December 1), art museums and galleries close their doors, turn off their lights, or shroud works of art while offering information about HIV/AIDS and safer sex. This International Day of Action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis is called Day With(out) Art. It honors individual legacies, commemorates personal loss, and increases awareness and action to combat the worldwide AIDS epidemic.  

This year, in observance of Day With(out) Art, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts is covering Blackness Brings Forth Life by Utah-based artist Vaimoana Niumeitolu. A mural that is included in our ongoing exhibition 2020: From here on out 

This year, the UMFA is partnering with Visual AIDS, University of Utah collaborators, and community partners to present ACME Session: Day With(out) Art 2023 on December 6, 2023.  

This event will feature a tour of the UMFA galleries lead by Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Emily Lawhead and an in-person screening and discussion of the film Everyone I Know Is Sick.  

Everyone I Know Is Sick  examines how our society excludes disabled and sick people by upholding a false dichotomy of health and illness. Inviting us to understand disability as a common experience rather than an exception to the norm, the program highlights a range of experiences spanning HIV, COVID, mental health, and aging. The commissioned artists foreground the knowledge and expertise of disabled and sick people in a world still grappling with multiple ongoing pandemics. 

Image: Hiura Fernandes and Lili Nascimento, Aquela criança com AID$ (That Child with AID$), 2023. Commissioned by Visual AIDS for Everyone I Know Is Sick