A Fourth Day Without Art

Tuesday marks the observance of the World Health Organization’s fourth AIDS Awareness Day, commemorated in the arts community as “A Day Without Art.”

The annual observance, begun in 1989, attempts to bring home the tremendous toll AIDS has taken on the arts community, and the title itself is a metaphor for the grim realization that if the disease continues unchecked, there could eventually come a day when no art makers are left.

This year, more than 35 local arts organizations, museums, galleries, universities and performance spaces have planned special events. Many are participating in multi-venue projects, including the AIDS Bottle Project (with each bottle commemorating someone lost to AIDS), the Ribbon Project (distribution of red ribbons) and airing of Robert Farber’s audio installation “Every 10 Minutes,” which features a church bell tolling at the current rate of AIDS deaths in the United States. Others have planned special lectures, exhibitions and performances, joining about 3,000 groups nationwide.

“This is the fourth Day Without Art, and nothing’s gotten easier for us. The pressure is growing, and the living are left to take care of the dead,” said Jordan Peimer, administrator of Highways Performance Space, which will honor 12 late artists whose work had been presented at Highways.

In that tribute, which begins at 8:30 p.m., folk singer Phranc, playwright James Carroll Pickett and performance artist Keith Antar Mason, among others, will present readings or performances of the work of late artists, including David Leahy, Craig Lee, Phil Zwickler and Brian Kief. Peimer will create an installation honoring visual artist Les Johnson, and performances by the late David Wojnarowicz, Jackson Hughes and Cliff Diller will be shown on video.

Among other local groups planning special events are the city of Santa Monica Arts Division, which will place symbolic black hoods over “The Dinosaurs of Santa Monica,” six topiary public sculptures along the popular 3rd Street Promenade; the Museum of Contemporary Art, which among other events will hold a 7 p.m. reading by members of the AIDS Project Los Angeles Creative Writing Workshops; Otis School of Art and Design, which will cancel its midday classes, close its galleries and feature a series of poetry readings and narratives on AIDS, and five Orange County-based symphonies and chorales, which will perform a joint outdoor concert from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Costa Mesa’s Pavilion of the Lakes (Anton Avenue at Avenue of the Arts).

Among venues and groups holding AIDS-related exhibitions are USC’s Fisher Gallery; Modarte: Concerned Artists and Designers Against AIDS (at Otis’ Bolsky Gallery); L.A. Eyeworks; Orange Coast College, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, which will create a display in memory of an employee who recently died of AIDS.

In addition, panels of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt are on view at Cal State Fullerton (today only), CalArts (Tuesday and Thursday), Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum (through Friday), the USC Health and Sciences campus in East L.A. (next Sunday to Dec. 9) and the San Jose Museum of Art (through Dec. 13).

Many venues will be closed in a literal observance of the Day Without Art metaphor, among them Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (whose employees will volunteer for the day at AIDS service organizations). The L.A. County Museum of Art will darken its contemporary art galleries, with the exception of the room housing Robert Longo’s large-scale work “Black Planet (for A.Z.), created in 1988 to honor his friend, Arnie Zane, who died of AIDS.