September 2 through Friday, October 2

Art Exhibit looks at AIDS epidemic

Graphic Alert: AIDS Posters from the Collection of Dr. Edward C. Atwater will be on display in Main Building's String Room Gallery on the Wells College campus Wednesday, September 2 through Friday, October 2.

Featuring more than 60 posters from 29 countries, this exhibition examines the role of posters in public health agencies' efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS and the HIV-virus. The exhibition explores how a single, unifying theme - the AIDS epidemic- encompasses a variety of issues, issues that are subject to the filter of distinct regions and cultures.

While the advances that have been made in worldwide communication have diminished some of the distinctions between cultures, regional styles and regional needs continue to be exhibited in graphics. The subtlety seen in the posters from the Eastern Bloc, for example, reflects a legacy of graphics as a means of expressing political opinion in a covert way. By contrast, the posters from developing nations are often direct and information-filled.

In addition to examining regional graphic styles, Graphic Alert looks at how the course that AIDS takes in a population varies depending on how the HIV virus is transmitted. This in turn has an impact on the visual and rhetorical methods that health agencies choose to convey their warnings. In Africa, for example where HIV is very often transmitted through heterosexual activity and most HIV positive individuals are women, posters often show images of children and families - an acknowledgment of the communal consequences of AIDS. In contrast, families are rarely depicted on posters from the industrialized West. Here, posters are designed to warn individuals to alter their behavior to lower their risk of infection.

The posters in Graphic Alert were provided as a public service from the collection of Dr. Edward C. Atwater, Rochester, New York. The exhibit is circulated by the Gallery Association of New York State, Inc., Hamilton, New York.

Thursday, September 24

Belgian author to read at Wells College

Belgian poet Laure-Anne Bosselaar will read from her work in Macmillan Hall’s Art Exhibit Room at Wells College on Thursday, September 24 at 8:00 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.

Bosselaar is currently translating contemporary American poetry into French, and Flemish poetry into English. Her latest poetry collection is The Hour Between Dog and Wolf.

Bosselaar’s work has been published in Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review, Denver Quarterly, and Harvard Review. She received first prize in the 1996 National Poetry Contest. Fluent in five languages, Bosselaar worked for Belgian and Luxembourg radio and television and has also published a collection of French poems.

She received a bachelor’s degree from Brussels Conservatory and a master’s degree in theatre arts from the National Institute for the Performing Arts in Brussels.

Bosselaar’s visit to Wells is made possible by a grant from The New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information on campus events call Wells College Public Relations at (315) 364-3209

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