AIDS/Brooklyn Exhibition collection
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Abstract
This collection includes oral histories and print materials collected and donated for the AIDS/Brooklyn exhibition, undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society in the early 1990s. The project was developed to document the impact of the AIDS epidemic on Brooklyn communities.
Historical Note
Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) began preparing the exhibition AIDS/Brooklyn in 1991. David M. Kahn, Executive Director of BHS at the time, had lost his partner, Ron Wogaman, to an AIDS-related illness earlier that year. The exhibition, which opened in 1993, aimed to document the crisis in Brooklyn through the material culture, personal narratives, and life histories of those living with HIV/AIDS. This exhibition was a part of BHS's institution-wide efforts to be more responsive to contemporary events in Brooklyn through exhibits, collection development, and education.
Robert Rosenberg, a documentary film producer, was hired as project director. Robert Sember, a New York University doctoral candidate in Performance Studies, also conducted many of the interviews. Kathryn Pope, a research assistant, made initial contacts with people and organizations affected by HIV/AIDS or involved in advocacy. The Brooklyn Historical Society's Museum Division staff also worked on this exhibition: Ellen Snyder-Grenier (Chief Curator at the start of the project), Daniel Barron (Curator of Collections), and Dwandalyn Reece (Chief Curator starting in November 1992).
Community Advisory and Scholarly Advisory Committees provided guidance throughout the process. The Community Advisory Committee was involved with identifying individuals and organizations in Brooklyn to reach out to for interviews and donations of materials. The exhibition team printed flyers in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole and sent them to community and healthcare organizations related to HIV/AIDS issues. This outreach effort was also publicized in the press.
At the time of the exhibition in 1993, the borough of Brooklyn had an estimated 35,000 cases of HIV. There, as in the rest of the nation, the disease was disproportionately affecting African American, Latino, and gay communities. Brooklyn, however, was experiencing demographic shifts in the spread of AIDS that differed from the considerable high-impact zone of Manhattan. The disease was impacting women and children in Kings County; over 1800 women had HIV/AIDS in 1992, according to the city's AIDS Surveillance Unit. Nationwide, estimated deaths from AIDS peaked in 1995; over 50,000 U.S. residents died that year. Due primarily to multi-drug treatment and lowering infection rates, the number has since declined.
Historical note bibliography:
Tabor, Mary B.W. "Chronicling the Spread of AIDS Throughout Brooklyn." New York Times (New York, NY), May 31, 1992.
Wong, Sumi. "Historical Society at Work On Show About a Very Contemporary Subject: the AIDS Epidemic and Its Impact on Brooklyn Residents." The Phoenix (Brooklyn, NY), September 25, 1992.
Young, Joyce. "Exhibit takes closer look at life with AIDS." New York Daily News (New York, NY), April 18, 1993.
Arrangement
The AIDS/Brooklyn Exhibition collection is organized into three series:
Series 1: Oral histories, 1992-1993
Series 2: Collected materials, 1985-1994
Series 3: Donated materials, 1945-1997
Scope and Contents
The AIDS/Brooklyn Exhibition collection includes oral histories conducted and materials collected for an exhibition undertaken by the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1993.
The oral history recordings, initially made on magnetic tape, were with narrators who had firsthand experience with the crisis in their communities, families, and personal life. Narrators came from Brooklyn and the New York metropolitan area and had different experiences that connected them with HIV/AIDS. Topics that come up in the oral histories include: hemophilia, sexual behavior, addiction, medical practice, social work, homelessness, activism, childhood, relationships, and parenting.
The print and audiovisual materials collected by BHS staff or donated to BHS for the exhibition include flyers, brochures, posters, HIV/AIDS medication and treatment information, obituaries, photographs, VHS tapes, and an audiocassette tape. Donated materials represent the work of HIV/AIDS awareness and advocacy organizations and individuals' lives.
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Families
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Conditions Governing Access
The oral histories are open to researchers with varied restrictions according to narrator agreement. Oral histories can be accessed on site at the Center for Brooklyn History's Othmer Library and online on the Oral History Portal.
The other materials are open to users without restriction onsite at the Othmer Library.
Conditions Governing Use
Use of the oral histories other than for private study, scholarship, or research requires the permission of Center for Brooklyn History. For assistance, please consult library staff at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
While many items at the Center for Brooklyn History are unrestricted, we do not own reproduction rights to all materials. Be aware of the several kinds of rights that might apply: copyright, licensing and trademarks. The researcher assumes all responsibility for copyright questions.
Preferred Citation
Collection citation:
Identification of item, date (if known); AIDS/Brooklyn Exhibition collection, 1993.001, [Box and Folder number]; Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
Oral history citation:
[Narrator Last Name, First name], Oral history interview conducted by [Interviewer First name Last name], Interview Date [Month day, YYYY], AIDS/Brooklyn Exhibition collection, [Object ID]; Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.
Material Specific Details
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The oral histories that make up this collection were compiled by a team including a project director, researcher and a research assistant. Staff for this project included Dwandalyn Reece King (Chief Curator), Robert Rosenberg (Project Director and Interviewer), Robert Sember (Researcher and Interviewer), and Kathryn Pope (Research Assistant).
These materials were gathered by Brooklyn Historical Society's Museum Division and transferred to the Library collections in 1997.
Separated Materials
Objects collected for this exhibition were separated into Center for Brooklyn History's Art and Artifacts collection and individually cataloged. These objects are currently separate, but are to be intellectually arranged with this collection.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Most recordings and transcripts were digitized in late 2015 and early 2016. Series 1: Oral histories was processed to the item-level by Theodore Kerr and Brett Dion in 2016. Series 2 and 3 were previously inventoried and a container list was created. Will Brown, Intern, started processing the non-oral history materials in January 2020. Alice Griffin, Archivist, finished processing the collection in March 2023.
Folder titles in brackets were provided by Alice Griffin. Preservation photocopies of newspaper clippings were made and newspaper discarded.
