Artist/Maker
Keith Haring
(American, 1958 – 1990)
Publisher
ACT UP
(founded 1987)
Ignorance = Fear / Silence = Death
1989
Offset lithograph
Purchased through the generosity of the Geduld Family
PR.055.2022.2
The iconic queer artist Keith Haring designed this poster a year after he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1988. ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), the largest AIDS activist group, used this poster for a wheat-pasting campaign in the early 1990s to raise awareness on the health epidemic. The three figures represent the wise monkeys of the proverbial “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.” Here, they reference not only the government neglect of the AIDS crisis, but society’s ignorance to this neglect, thus turning a blind eye towards evil.
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