A man buried in sand with only parts of his face visible. Two halves of a loaf of bread sewn together. Someone wearing a mask of the poet Rimbaud against various backdrops in New York City, sometimes just standing there, sometimes masturbating, sometimes shooting heroin. A film portraying an obsessed fan's behavior as his idol rejects his worship and he falls to pieces very graphically. A man sitting at the docks of Manhattan, his face all painted in blue. And my personal favorite, a take on road construction signs, this one portraying a man eating out of a cow's ass.

This is just a fraction of the art produced by David Wojnarowicz.

As I read back what I just wrote, some might be inclined to believe all his work glorifies destruction and negativity. Personally, I think there's more to his work than that, but even if that was the case, there was a reason. He was dying of AIDS, and being gay and infected with AIDS in 80's America was to be looked upon with scorn from everyone who viewed the half-assed coverage of AIDS as an act of god.

I first discovered David Wojnarowicz when I was living out on Long Island. As a teen, I felt isolated and would always stay in my room listening to music or reading books, not caring about the outside world. In my 20's, I found myself wanting to explore the world a little more. I picked up my first issue of the Village Voice and inside I came across an article about David Wojnarowicz. He had just died. I still remember the picture from that article. He was sitting down and had such a piercing stare that I was mesmerized. To this day, I still can't put my finger on why.

My girlfriend, Tonya, feels that when you die you leave an impression of yourself somewhere, some more so that others. A larger than life personality, or a traumatic death could leave behind such an impression. Perhaps I somehow sensed there was more to this man than just another gay artist who died of AIDS.

Maybe a year or so later, I can't remember when, I would run across another article on him. It was a drawing of him smashing St. Patrick's cathedral. I was in my anti-religion phase back then and thought this was pretty cool. The article was about the comic book, "Seven Miles a Second", which was based on his autobiographical writings. In that particular scene, he is raging against the condemnation by the church on people infected with AIDS. I became more intrigued.

Fast forward to 1999, whereupon I would see yet another article in yet another Village Voice, this one about the retrospective show, "Fever", at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Soho. Of course I had to go. I ended up spending half the day there. The entire building was full of his work. There were paintings, sculptures, films, even music from his old band, 3 Teens Kill 4. It was an amazing output.

OK, so why write about this now? Who gives a fuck? That's my whole point is that a lot of people don't give a fuck or don't know about his art. Searches on the web only come up with little paragraphs here and there. It's just really sad to me that when most people think of New York Art, they think of Warhol, or Basquiat, who as far as I was concerned were more into keeping up the myth of the artist rather than actually producing essential art. I know I'm probably going to catch hell from some people, but what the fuck did those two do that were so damn interesting anyway? If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong and so be it, but I've never seen anything that Warhol has done that had the pure, honest emotion that David Wojnarowicz put into his work. He had something to say and he said in more ways than most people could, and yet I still don't know how to pronounce his goddamn last name (which could be also due to that I'm your typical American ignoramus who has no experience with other cultures). It almost proves the point that the celebrity of the artist is more important than the art. I guess if David Wojnarowicz looked more like a freak with a white wig or a handsome young black man instead of starving lower east side artist then he'd be more well known.

Hopefully, a forum like this can change that. Let's face it, there's a ton of under appreciated artists from New York City whose work ends up in the trash. I hate to think of artwork rotting at Fresh Kills, because I like to think that art has some type of permanence to it. But it happens every day and the only way to stop it is to make the effort to appreciate it, even if you don't like it.

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 09-11-02 at 01:06 AM.]

when I saw you last at Jackie 60, but I was too shy to approach ... my boyfriend, ever the art and underground enthusiast, is a great fan of the art and writings of David Wojnarowicz and has been completely blown away by "Seven Miles a Second". In reading Mr. Wojnarowicz's bio to me, the band name 3 Teens Kill 4, kept sticking out in my head. It occurred to me at Jackie where I knew it from, are you not one of the founding members of that band?

Perhaps next time we see you out, or somewhere on these boards, you wouldn't mind sharing a tale or two with us about this new hero in Doug's life.

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 09-01-02 at 12:11 PM.]

Yes, Tonya, I will share with you a tale or two... thousand, if you like...
3 Teens Kill 4 No Motive was a New York Post headline (naturally), found by artist Ken Tisa, who had drawn up a list of about 100 names for a band we wanted to start in 1979.
David and I had lived through the era of both Fillmores so we knew that we wanted our performances to include words, music and visuals.
I was also remembering recently that our manager at the time, Iolo Carew, had gotten us all set to be booked as the opening act for Kate Bush's US tour in support of her brilliant "The Dreaming" in 1982, when unfortunately Ms. Bush had a breakdown, refused to fly, and cancelled the tour. It is probable that ours, and David's, lives would have been very different had the tour gone as scheduled, but I have no doubt that David would have continued to create on the more visual end of the artistic spectrum. I, however probably would have gotten sloppier a whole lot sooner ;-)

I am also the body behind the mask of some of David's "Rimbaud In New York" photos, if you are familiar with them.

Long lonely walks along the Hudson River, the back of the porn theater on 14th St., the St.Marks bath house, doughnuts at 4am. David was an amazing and complicated man. I miss him and the times that we lived through.

Thank Goddess that Hatches survived.

Bobby, we survive for a reason.
Perhaps, as the narrator in Joan Didion's Book Of Common Prayer says, "I will be her witness."

Kenny Tisa named 3 Teens? I had no idea.

I did know that you were Rimbaud Hatches 'cause you gave us a beautiful print.

Yes Kenny did! And did you know Max Blagg was in the original band? He did a song he wrote called "Daddy."
BTW, the pics of Rimbaud masturbating were not me, though I now wish they were :-)

I got a camera.

Bad, daddy!

In such a short span David W. did more for breakthrough art and Aids politics than most of us could hope for in a lifetime. One of the few art shows I've ever attended and gone away intoxicated with the creativity of the work. There's not much more astounding then seeing work you may have dreamt of or intended to create and then brought to reality by a fanatic obsessed. My initial reaction was, damn he beat me to it and then realized, oh great, now I don't have to do it because much of it was quite labor intensive. Besides, he excelled at bringing new meaning to iconic imagery which many fail to do or even consider. Had his life not been cut short, no doubt, he'd be a giant of the last millenium.

last edit//9/13/02
upon re-reading this post I thought in my excitement of finding kindred spirits of David W. I may have sounded a tad suggestive of being on a par or nearly as creative as his works proved to be. Such is not the case of course, what I meant was that there were a few things that some artists would also find universal or identify with that David managed to embody and express through his vision. Difference being he acted upon it without hesitation. I thank all for not taking me to task here.
rb//nyc//bronks B&T

Hatches, you're a wealth of knowledge for all of us, I hope you're considering setting aside your life interferences to assemble the definitive history of these times in book form before it all vanishes to memory or lack of. I read your post about the video projections down by Canal st. and couldn't help but think of a beam of light coming out of one of your apartment windows?

rb//nyc//bronx//bohemia

[This message was edited by dreambot on 09-11-02 at 03:16 AM.]

[This message was edited by dreambot on 09-13-02 at 01:03 PM.]

i think it's pronounced:
WAR-nuh-RO-vitch. is that right?

a true genius from what i know, which is admittedly very little. a lover of mine introduced me to his poetry and told me stories of installations he would do in rooms on the piers. i would love to hear more and know where to look for more of his work.
school me!!
this is the first artist whose name has brought me into this new forum.

Indeed, I have been thinking about this topic all week, as I too would like to see more in it (and, more of it's ilk). What I have managed to obtain from D. is a copy of the program from David's show a few years back at the above-mentioned museum in SoHo. It is about 10-pages, so I need to get text-scanning software installed). D. also has the above graphic art book mentioned, but I need to look into reprinting rights. Generally, it's pretty easy to get permission to reprint an artist's work who has publications on the market (basically you are running a free ad/link to that publisher.)

I do believe that Johnny mentioned both above and at M.F. party last Sunday, that he had an image. He may be kind enough to scan it. I don't think he'd have any copy-right issues reprinting it. He'll probably see this post, and load it on if it's possible. I will follow-up on future installations, etc. before next weekend.

Lastly, if you would like to set up a topic in here about an artist (especially, a talent whose work is not well-known) this is why the forum exists.

If you have suggestions, but do not wish to start a topic, you can post suggestions to "Great Topic Ideas". I'll see what I can do! I plan to try to find links for all artists mentioned in these ArtMaker posts as they pop up. This is a great way of uncovering an artist "lost in time."

Until next time ... Tonya ...(PS. We only launched a week ago, so that might be why this is the first artist topic to catch your interest.

---Or, Daddy-D. & Hatches, "We tell ourselves stories to keep ourselves alive," says Joan Didion, as quoted in an intro to a "quasi-fiction" American queer "best of" anthology featuring the work of David Wojnarowicz ... by Brian Bouldrey

---Goblin, for thee I have done mass research and have compiled a "DW" file of information for this topic some 40 pages in length ... It is too much for any one person to take in one night. So I will be adding links to names and places throughout this topic, as well as the rest of the posts, in the days and weeks to come. Amazing that I had never heard of this person until Doug came along (and Hatches, subsequently, "clued" me in) ... for I have discovered layer upon layer of inter-active, multi-media realms online where David can be found these days.

Sidestepping all the obvious info needing posting - i.e. his books/works for sale, galleries/museums which catalog his work or plan exhibitions, biography information, places where his art/voice/likeness is continually being reinvented and reproduced, etc. There were two things that I came upon that I personally enjoyed discovering.

The first: Jon's Homepage - Whoever Jon is, and whatever his Rubik's (or Rimbaud's) cube is about, I'd love to know ... I did not have the nerve to access the video cam, so, if someone else does, PLEASE! let us all know what happens ... that Tinkerbell scared me away ...

The second: The below article that starts with "the era" and "climate" of David and moves rapidly through the last few decades of New York Art Culture - living it, learning it and lumping it. I found the piece to be fodder so to speak for the ArtMaker forum on the whole, as well as a boat load of names and places for me to make links to (thus to find out what can not yet be found on the search engines about DW, and the rest of the "nuts and bolts" and "bags of tricks," that will eventually be the "product" of this forum.)

------------------------------------------------Dual Nature. ArtForum: October, 1999. by Peter Nagy. (artnet.com Nagy bio) - Even in the midst of the thrill of it all, it was apparent that two contingencies – one demographic, the other economic - laid the groundwork for the making of the "East Village Art Scene." First, the postwar baby boom, which peaked in 1959, led to an outpouring of art-school grads in the early '80s. Sometimes it seems as though a majority of my generation, having grown up in the fertile '60s, pursued careers in the creative arts, and the New York art world simply couldn't accommodate this glut of brash, snot-nosed artists eager to exhibit their goods, and consequently burst at the seams. Second, the boom market enabled a generation of artist-entrepreneurs not only to start their own galleries but to keep their doors open and flourish.

I graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1981, having majored in communication design and feasted on art-history and critical-theory courses in general. At the time, I was working as a typesetter in a small ad and magazine shop on West Fifty-seventh Street and one day Alan Belcher walked in to do pasteups and mechanicals. We bonded almost immediately over Malcolm McLaren's latest project, Bow Wow Wow, and soon started going to galleries together on our lunch hour. Our favorite artists at the time - Lucio Fontana, Piero Manzoni, Yves Klein - were still underdogs, and we were both excited by obscure foreign Pop, such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and the French Nouveaux Realistes. Our tastes were remarkably similar.

At home, I was sharing an East Village basement with Doug Bressler, a friend from Parsons who was in the band 3 Teens Kill 4 alongside David Wojnarowicz, and our landlord was Bill Stelling, cofounder of the Fun Gallery. I had started making art, and prowled the galleries of SoHo and uptown incessantly. One day, Bill invited me to an opening at the storefront space he had recently started with Patti Astor. I was completely alienated by both the hip-hop crowd and the graffiti art, but appreciated the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "let's put on a show" attitude of it all. Belcher and I started to talk, spotted an East Village storefront only to lose it and find a better one, and, with the help of some cohorts from Parsons and about $500, opened Nature Morte on May 15, 1982. We chose the name because we liked its postpunk feel (something akin to the name Joy Division) and figured that all art was really just a still life anyway. Gracie Mansion was mounting shows in her bathroom, Civilian Warfare opened on the very same day we did, and, as much to our astonishment as everyone else's, the galleries started popping up around us like mold spores. Think back and you realize that this was a pivotal moment for the art world in general. The first waves of European neoexpressionism had arisen just a few seasons earlier, Mary Boone and Julian Schnabel were electrifying the scene, and established galleries were opening huge new spaces. I had been influenced by the Joseph Beuys retrospective at the Guggenheim in 1979-80.

It brought a physical type of Conceptual art to the forefront and gave contemporary art its blockbuster potential. At the time, I associated Beuys's social sculpture with Michael Asher's experiments in institutional critique in Los Angeles in the '70s. With my education in advertising, publication design, and packaging I was gravitating toward museum work, so it seemed natural to fuse my interests into an art gallery. At that point, the commercial gallery seemed to be a direct route to action, a way to forgo the hassles and dependencies associated with alternative spaces, and the nonprofit foundations with all their paperwork and advisory boards. I had been impressed with Colab's "Times square Show," ABC No Rio, and Fashion Moda, especially with their do-it-yourself spontaneity and their success at drumming up attention in the mainstream press.

My generation came of age in the early '70s. We had been aware of the '60s - the hippies, the acid, the antiwar movement - but we were too young to join in. We watched it all on TV, saw the era unfold on the pages of Life. But by the time we could participate (i.e., when we finally had the part-time jobs that let us buy our own clothes and records), times had changed. Glitter and glam were the rage, and a new rebellion based on style and a much more personal set of issues (sexual, psychological) was at hand. Fashion was important - really important - and by the time we arrived at the East Village scene (by way of disco and punk, let's not forget), seasonal innovation and parricide were the established cultural norms. I make this point to get at the mind-set of my generation at the beginning of the '80s. We were accustomed to the comfort food of novelty, nonthreatening and perfectly in line with the paradigm of change for change's sake that was symptomatic of all areas of cultural production (not just the garment industry). No wonder the art and fashion worlds continued to schmooze along until they became virtually indistinguishable. Change was necessary, fun, and good, but it didn't mean that the basic structure of things was likely to topple. The punks unfortunately had to learn the same lesson the Surrealists had learned forty years earlier:

You could change your own life and your aesthetics, but that would have little effect on society as a whole. These, then, were the conditions that created a new neighborhood for art that, in retrospect, seems to have anticipated "grunge" in many ways, if grunge is defined as the hybrid of hippie and punk. The spaces were small, by any standards, the walls were often left unplastered, and lighting was decidedly ad hoc, but the scene wasn't "anti-art" in any sense. In fact, most of us running these galleries aspired to a Fifty-seventh Street professionalism, lusting after computers in those days before there were even fax machines, let alone e-mail. We welcomed our acknowledgment by the establishment as we opened our invitations for each of the four nights of festivities inaugurating the new Museum of Modern Art in 1984. We loved art and its institutions: That's why we had started our own. Once the money started to come in, we gleefully layered on the Commes des Garcons and Yohji before heading off to restaurants like Indochine, Hawaii Five-O, or Hasaki, and we welcomed the big-name collectors and their limos to the scruffy neighborhood (kudos to Patti and Bill of Fun, who got the ball rolling by precipitating Bruno Bischofberger's early arrival). In the end, it's really the collectors whom we all have to thank for creating the scene. They responded enthusiastically to this hothouse youth culture and created a buoyant speculative market (which continues today) for those fresh out of their June gowns. Those were the giddy, drug-enhanced days in which a new generation greedily accepted art history's mantle, and I, for one, never imagined they would come to an end so soon.

With twenty-twenty hindsight, it's easy to see how specious and fickle the outpourings of both attention and money were, and it's easy now to point up the hubris of those who believed that the rules of the game were changing forever. Alan Belcher and I never imagined ourselves to be revolutionaries; rather, we naively found ourselves in the right place at the right time, a moment in which, as I still believe, true progress was being made in the visual arts (though this was happening mostly in SoHo). Belcher and I identified strongly with the Metro Pictures school of art: media-derived, critical, and ironic. Consequently, we loathed the initial definition of the East Village by way of Gracie Mansion's kitsch (had seen it all before at Holly Solomon's on West Broadway) and Civilian Warfare's Urban Punk (now seemingly the most true-to-the-neighborhood aesthetic). We felt vindicated only by the arrival, and subsequent success, of International With Monument and Cash/Newhouse, and were proud to be peers in the court of Collins and Milazzo. It was Collins and Milazzo - that cross between Deleuze and Guattari and Ozzie and Harriet - who deserve the most credit for creating the intellectual East Village. They not only brought together (over Tricia's home cooking) the like-minded young artists and gallerists of the neighborhood, but virtually built the bridge connecting the Pictures generation with its spawn.

Personally, I learned volumes from my experience in the East Village, up to my eyeteeth in it as I was. The anxiety of making it into the history books was erased, as the history books themselves were democratized, opened up for seemingly anyone to write in. It's surprising just how many "East Village" shows were mounted around the world, usually instigated by outside forces, but occasionally from within the neighborhood itself, for there certainly hasn't been a glut of geographically inspired curating since (no shows anywhere, to my knowledge, on "The Marais" or "The Galleries of Bergamot Station"), which points to the fact that the audience outside saw the East Village scene as more cohesive and homogenized than did those of us within it. Just as the history books expanded to record more names, we became acutely aware, at an early age, of the rapid turnover of artists required to fuel the novelty-driven market

(I'm often reminded of Robert Pincus-Witten's essay "The Scene that Turned on a Dime" [1986]). Anyone involved in the scene can think of dozens of artists and dealers who seem to have disappeared from the art world completely - far more, in fact, than those whom we know to be still active.

One thing that distinguished the East Village from SoHo or the uptown galleries was the prominence of the artist-dealer. One would guess that most people who start their own
galleries had, at some point in their lives, entertained ideas of making art themselves. (Such ambitions, if they weren't totally abandoned in high school, were usually crushed during college.) So the notion of the artist-dealer, which might seem so surprising, was really to be expected. There wasn't any great new twist behind the rise of the East Village scene. It was just another chapter in a long history of artists taking matters into their own hands to get their works out there (from the Salon des Refuses [1863] to Oldenburg's Store [1961-62] to the "Freeze" show in London [1988]). But in the early '80s there was a political and conceptual appropriateness to fusing the roles of artist, dealer, and curator that accompanied the turn toward institutional critique, toward rethinking representation itself, and toward the inclusion of hitherto marginalized voices not only in the art world but in the society at large. I liked (and still like) the notion of bringing other artists' works together into still lifes, as well as the manipulation of meaning through montage and assemblage.

Our success in the East Village of the '80s as both artists and dealers forced us to choose one role or the other, and I, among others, opted for the role of maker over seller, since there seemed to be no end of gallery attention and collector enthusiasm. But as we all know now, the bubble burst, and there was a mad scramble - by the artists for teaching positions and by the galleries for still younger artists with even fresher work. I have since gravitated back to running a commercial gallery (in New Delhi, India), but I seem to be the only one who has done so. Certainly the fact that I moved to the other side of the world and encountered an art scene full of possibilities and potential akin to the East Village in the early '80s helped. It would have been difficult to muster the gumption to put it together again in New York. I am conscious of being penalized for being a dealer: Artists aren't supposed to be interested in the market (ha ha), and my choice is, apparently, seen by some as opportunistic and manipulative. In New York people often ask how I can be an artist and run a gallery at the same time (though the emphasis seems to be on availability of time rather than on ethics). I counter that no one would question were I to head the painting department at Yale while continuing to make and show my work. As it happens, I'm not particularly interested in academia and would rather work with mature artists on the presentation and promotion of their work. I would find it nearly impossible to offer much encouragement to the new crop of art students each year. I prefer the combination of market, media, creativity, and personality that comes together in a gallery.

Was my outlook and attitude forged in the crucible of the East Village? Undoubtedly, I suspect I will always choose the entrepreneurial, peripatetic path over the security and routine of higher education. Though the art world makes a pretense of fetishizing the most radical young work, I don't see any real risk taking or rule breaking when it comes to museum curating or gallery running (save for Matthew Marks spontaneously generating a new art neighborhood and Gavin Brown's recent venture wherein honesty wins out over sobriety). Perhaps the greatest contribution of (and, for many, the biggest problem with) the whole East Village thang was that it foregrounded, then obviated, the notion that bohemia wasn't necessarily antithetical to a culture of glamour and prestige; and this led directly to today's gluttonous market (in all areas of cultural production), which forces any underground to the surface so quickly that the very concept of an underground ceases to exist. It's tempting to see the East Village as the last gasp of us-against-them bohemia, of an underground that held its ground, if ever so briefly. But, then again, maybe that's the way most people reminisce about the moment when they passed from adolescence into adulthood, from innocence into maturity, from being a nobody to being a somebody.

Peter Nagy is an artist and proprietor of the present-day Gallery Nature Morte in New Delhi. With Alan Belcher, he cofounded the original Nature Morte in 1982.

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 09-11-02 at 02:41 AM.]

What a great artical. That was my youth!
I remember at the time older people telling us to "enjoy this time, it's not always like this". Now I see what they meant. Can you imagine opening a storefront gallery in the East Village for $500 today?
That scene is where Chi Chi and I were hatched. Her writing, my records (our first gig was at The Time Square Show) everything we've done from JACKIE 60 and MOTHER to these MOTHERBOARDS all come from that kindergarden. It's ironic and fabulous to read about "then" on the "now" MOTHERBOARDS. I love it! ARTMAKER rules.

Gobs, David actually preferred the Eastern European pronunciation of his name, Voy-na-ro-vitch, but gave up on that early on and settled for War-na-ro-vitch.
Tonya, interesting the Didion connection, as that "Lady Of The Canyon" and the L. A. connection influenced prominently in the late '70s mostly through my friends and those I had come into contact with such as Tomato Du Plenty, Exene, Chuck E. Weiss etc. and I spent an unusual amount of time there. Understand that Los Angeles was a
very different place back then.
I also remember David and I going to the Joseph Beuys retrospective at the Guggenheim (?) and being so totally blown away we went back two or three times.

from TonyaKnudsen: I have moved this "episode" of "How Dreambot came to ArtMaker" from David W. to that one.

quote:

---

Now it all makes sense Hatches. You, David, Joseph Beuys; e.t. al, I think the first art magazine I ever saw featured Beuys (and his hat) and my life as a salient idiot was forever changed. Up until then, I didn't quite get art, bunch of over-priced pretty pictures so what. But when post-war artists (Beuys included)started again exploring new mediums, approaches, combinations, concepts, meaning, culture finally started breaking out of its' self-imposed 50's conformists constricture. Which doesn't bring me to the question. Does anyone know how or why the Ray Johnson homage exists on Ludlow street? And when ya gonna get your butt up to da Bronks and try on some of my outfits for your archival collection. Ya better hurry up soon, I may have to move if I can't figure out how to buy the house I'm in. This time it'll be back to Berlin.

---

[This message was edited by TonyaKnudsen on 09-21-02 at 06:45 PM.]

Daddy-D: I promise not to dreg up emotions too often. And someday, you and Chi Chi will have to let me write a bit about your early exploits. This is something I look forward to. You know, one of the first conversations I had with Rose, maybe about four years ago, was about whether or not I could come in to Mother early one night just to interview her. She seemed to me to have stories untold of amazing interest (however since there was no place to publish such tales) I did not pursue the endeavor. Also, I got the impression, she found me a bit odd for making the request.

Hatches: I am an intuitive being. And the older I get, the more accurate my "musings" become. I make connections, although half the time I do not know I am doing so. Often to the amazement and disruption to those around me. I utter things -- because some part of my ego must know if they are correct. It's like with your last post, all I could think of was this guitar book I bought after my guitar was given to me (ask me sometime who gave it to me). I was fascinated for some time with the section in that book about alternative guitar tunings, but what this has to do with your post, I'm completely lost. I'm sure it will make sense to me some night while spinning about the dance floor.

Dreambot: Ref. 1: Mail artists around the world embraced Johnson's notion of making ordinary mail an art of extraordinary wit and beauty. Johnson's legacy lives today in numerous gatherings of mail artists such as the NYCS Salami Chapter which paid homage to Ray's passing at Katz' Deli. Ref 2: 1995. February/február "NEW YORK CORRESPONDENSE SCHOOL" Salami Chapter, gathered at Katz's Deli, New York City, USA (www) / "PRAY FOR RAY, IN A MEMORY OF RAY JOHNSON" /medium: fax/ Begijnhof-Centrum voor Kunsten, Hasselt, Belgium. (org.: T.A.C./Guy Bleus)

Goblin: as requested:

Exhibitions / Galleries /Museums
Although there are the occasional exhibitions and shows where David's work can be seen, I can find no current listings in this country. However, there are several virtual galleries and a few galleries and museums about town that catalog his work. I recommend phoning any gallery or museum in advance to make sure the work is indeed available for public view.

Virtual Galleries
New Museum of Contemporary Art - Fever: The Art of David Wojnarowicz – Online Gallery

New Museum of Contemporary Art - Online Slide Show

The Museum of Modern Art in New York has launched a visual database of work by artists with HIV/AIDS. Entitled The Virtual Collection, the on-line database features 3,000 high-resolution images of works by 150 artists who have died of AIDS or are living with HIV/AIDS. The Virtual Collection can be accessed via the MoMa Web site and through other museums and institutions around the United States.

Queer Arts Resource - Wojnarowicz
QAR was founded in 1996 as one of the first Internet-based arts organizations. Since that time they have produced over 40 exhibitions demonstrating the range, depth, and importance of queer artistic expression.

Queer Cultural Center - Wojnarowicz
Founded in 1993 Qcc is a multidisciplinary arts presenting organization that conducts artistic and interpretive programs exploring queer identity issues.

DIVA TV Netcast - David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) reads several works from his writings at the Drawing Center (New York City, 1992) as a benefit for Needle Exchange shortly before he died. DIVA TV was founded in 1989 as a video-documenting affinity group with ACT UP (AIDS_Coalition_To_Unleash_Power) an activist group famous for its direct action against bureaucratic inaction and drug company profiteering in the AIDS crisis and widely acknowledged as re-energizing civil disobedience tactics in the United States.

Visual AIDS Web gallery
Begun in 1994, the Archive Project is the largest national slide archive of works by artists with HIV/AIDS, used by curators, galleries, museums, historians, and students.

Galleries
Exit Art / The First World, 548 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, 212-966-7745

Interview with Abraham Lubelski of Exit Art
Gracie Mansion Gallery, 407 East 6th Street, New York, NY 10003, 212-505-9577

P.P.O.W., 476 Broome Street, New York, New York 10013, 212-941-8642

Museums
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 5th Ave. at 82nd Street, New York, NY 10028, 212-879-5500:
Pandemic: Imaging AIDS 2002-08-30 until 2002-10-27, Pretoria Art Museum, Arcadia, Pretoria ZA South Africa

New Museum of Contemporary Art, 583 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, 212-219-1222: contact: Rebecca Metzger, Public Relations Officer)

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021 212-570-3676: books & audio recordings

Allen Memorial A