Organizers of Atlanta AIDS Exhibit Hope Display Will Speed the Creation of South’s First AIDS Museum
The organizers of an exhibit highlighting the achievements of African-American AIDS activists in Atlanta hope that the collection will hasten the creation of the South's first museum "dedicated to the documentation and study of how AIDS has affected the world, both socially and politically," the Jacksonville Times-Union reports. The exhibit, titled "From the Beginning: African-American Heroes and the AIDS Epidemic in Atlanta From 1981-1991," is on display at the Center for AIDS and Humanity in Atlanta. The exhibit includes photographs and recorded interviews that honor members of Atlanta's black community who either are or were AIDS activists, volunteers or health care providers. Several Atlanta AIDS organizations are working to expand the idea of the exhibit into a museum. "This exhibit is a demonstration of what the museum would do," Jim Struve, a board member of Positive Impact, which is working with the AIDS Survival Project and AIDS Treatment Initiatives to develop the museum, said. Current plans call for the museum to be housed in Atlanta and have an annual budget of about $500,000. The organizers hope that the museum would have between three to five new exhibits each year, with older exhibits being taken from the museum and circulated across the country. "All exhibits would be mobile and reproducible. We see them going on to places like corporate lobbies, shopping malls, churches and other service organizations," Jeff Graham, director of AIDS Survival Project, said. Fund raising for the museum will not officially begin until Graham, Struve and Guy Pujol, director of AIDS Treatment Initiatives, recruit someone to manage the project (Basinger, Jacksonville Times-Union, 7/29).
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