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This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on February 25, 2025. Watch the full video here.
Stephen Morrison: Welcome. I’m J. Stephen Morrison, senior vice president here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies – CSIS – in Washington, D.C. Delighted to host this session today dedicated to Keith Haring’s extraordinary legacy.
A special thanks to a few folks here, starting with Jirair Ratevosian, our host for this roundtable conversation, close friend and senior associate with our program here at CSIS. He had the inspiration, the idea, to pull this event together, and thank you, Jirair.
We’re joined by Brad Gooch. Congratulations, Brad, on the biography of Keith Haring, “Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring.” We’ll be hearing much more about that. We don’t often host award-winning poets and biographers here at CSI so we’re delighted and honored to have you with us and to see your passion for the Persian poet Rumi – we have the Rumi Restaurant not far from here dedicated to that poet – and the other work you’ve done, Flannery O’Connor and Frank O’Hara.
Also delighted Martha Cameron is with us here today representing the International Community of Women Living with AIDS. Vitally important to have you with us at this particular moment in particular. We’ll be talking about past crises of HIV and the role of art and the leadership of people like Keith Haring. We’ll also be talking about art and advocacy today in this particular moment that we’re in where the crisis has returned in terms of HIV/AIDS.
I want to also offer special thanks to our newest colleague here at CSIS, Priya Chainani, who pulled this together with support from Sophia Hirshfield. Our production team has been very active in putting this roundtable in the round format together – Qi Yu, Alex Brunner, Dhanesh Mahtani. A special thanks to them.
We’ll have a reception after this. We’ll be able to sell books to those of you who are interested and Brad has kindly agreed to stay behind and sign books, and the East City Books, our indie bookstore on Capitol Hill, has kindly come over. Maggie Parrish will be with us there.
A few quick thoughts and then I’m going to turn the program over to Jirair to kick things off.
Keith Haring endures. As we’ll hear, he attracts higher and higher attention and interest within the art world and beyond, as we’ll hear. It was just 35 years February 16 his passing, and his reputation and influence continues to radiate and we’ll be talking about that and why that is.
Here in D.C. not far from here at the newly launched Rubell Museum there’s a room dedicated to Keith Haring’s sketches that he composed inspired by Marvin Gaye’s epic song “What’s Going On?” Gaye grew up here in D.C. He attended middle school in the building that is now where the Rubell Museum is housed and the Rubell’s legendary art collectors befriended Keith Haring in the 1980s.
Brad, you can fill us –
Brad Gooch: (Off Mic.)
Dr. Morrison: And bought these sketches and preserved them, Keith Haring’s sketches, that matched the song, inspired by the song, and put a room together in this beautiful new museum. It’s a very nice combination of Keith Haring and Marvin Gaye and this desire to do this in our community.
As we’ll hear, you know, Jirair and I last summer in Munich had the opportunity to visit the Haring and Warhol exhibit. I think you had a book event there.
Dr. Gooch: Yeah, I just spoke there.
Dr. Morrison: Just another amazing sign of the – of the global influence and importance of all of this.
So thank you all for joining us. I want to turn the program over and thanks again, Jirair, for leading us.
Jirair Ratevosian: Wonderful.
Dr. Morrison: Thank you.
Mr. Ratevosian: Thank you so much, Steve.
Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon. It’s an honor to introduce today’s conversation about a figure, as Steve said, whose art, activism, and legacy continue to surround us, and who better to guide us through Keith Haring’s extraordinary life other than Brad Gooch, whose biography “Radiant” captures the spirit of an artist who burned brightly even in the darkest of times.
Keith Haring was a child of the ’60s growing up amid civil rights marches and anti-war protests. It was an era of resistance and revolution. Sounds familiar. When he moved to New York City in 1978 the city was alive with creative energy and sexual liberation but it was also simmering with deep social and political turmoil.
Crack cocaine was omnipresent and just a few years later in 1981 the first official mention of what would become later known as AIDS showed up in a report by the CDC. That report published on June 5 described five previously healthy young gay men who had suddenly fallen ill with a mysterious immune disorder.
Their illness and deaths marked the dark dawn of the AIDS crisis. By the mid-1980s HIV had become the leading cause of death among young people in the United States with communities in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles ravaged by the devastation.
Haring, diagnosed with HIV in 1987 himself, responded not by retreating but by creating. His creations became a bold call to action, spreading love, messages around stigma and urgency. He used his art to fight stigma, support public health campaigns, and raise awareness at a time when governments and institutions, largely, turned their back. His “Ignorance equals fear, silence equals death” piece became synonymous with AIDS activism.
Keith Haring eventually passed away in February 1990, as Steve said exactly 35 years ago this month, this past week, but his vision, his generosity, and his fight for justice endures.
So today, through Brad Gooch’s biography we’ll have the opportunity to explore not only the life of an artist but also the history of a movement and a message that remains as relevant in 2025 as it did in 1985.
Brad Gooch is an acclaimed biographer, a novelist, a poet whose work has brought to life many of the most compelling figures in art and culture. He is the author of “City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara,” and “Smash Cut” where he chronicles his relationship with his late partner and filmmaker Howard Brookner, who also died of AIDS in 1989. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine. He’s been recognized with the Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities award as well, cementing his place as one of the foremost literary biographers of our time. Thank you for being here, Brad.
I also have Martha Cameron with me today. Martha is the executive director of the International Community of Women Living with HIV in North America. She has dedicated her life to advancing the rights and health of women living with HIV around the world, previously serving as director of the prevention for the Women’s Collective here in D.C. as well. Her advocacy spans multiple platforms, multiple borders, including the Positive Women’s Network, the U.S. People Living with HIV/AIDS Caucus, and the D.C. Center for AIDS Research. She’s also an ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. As an HIV positive mother of two HIV negative children – beautiful children – she is an important voice in D.C. on matters of HIV policy as well as global HIV efforts, namely, PEPFAR. So, Martha, thank you so much for being here.
So let’s dive in. Brad, I’m going to start with you. I’ve got a few questions for you. Then I’ll go to Martha and then we’ll kind of bring it together, and then we’ll open it up to the audience for a couple questions before we wrap up.
So Brad, Keith Haring lived a life that was both deeply personal and powerfully public, as we’ve talked about. What motivated you to write his biography and how did you approach balancing the intimacy of his private life with the broader societal impacts of his work?
Dr. Gooch: Well, I think the beginning – I mean, the book was in my mind for decades and it begins that I was living in the East Village in 1978 and Keith Haring comes to New York and lives in the East Village in 1978, so there was this connection in that way. And then I started to intersect with his work, which you couldn’t avoid if you were downtown at that time.
The first was I was walking with my lover we called them then – partner, husband – Howard Brookner from the West Village to the East Village and we saw stamped on every street corner the sign that said, “Clones go home” by this sort of fake organization. Keith started Fags Against Facial Hair, which was an inside joke in the gay community, and Howard said, you’d better go home to me, I remember. (Laughs.)
So but this is the way you – and no one knew who was doing this. And then in Soho you begin to see barking dogs, crawling babies, which are early Keith kind of imagery, and then he begins drawing in the subways these black matte advertising panels that are sort of fallow between ads. And this becomes a project for five years. He does about 5,000 of these chalk drawings that are kind of impermanent and, again, for months no one knew who was doing this. The New York Post had a(n) article. They called him Chalk Man.
I would also then intersect with him somewhat. He came to a book party that I gave. I remember seeing him at the opening of the Apollo Theater with his kind of fabulous posse of Black and Latin women who he was – who he would be with. And also then when Howard was sick with AIDS later Keith gave money for his care, a kind of characteristic Keith Haring thing to do, and I remember him at Howard’s funeral standing in the back looking kind of spooked because he was within, you know, a year of his own death at that point.
So in all these ways I was thinking about – first, about writing a novel about him and I was always partly wanting to write about that generation in that time and that place, and Keith, as you mentioned, was so both public and private that sort of everything went through him from that time.
He was a perfect figure to both write about himself and about all the ups and downs and, you know, the amazing decade that he had, going from a kid from Kutztown to an international art store and then, you know, dealing with these issues and with the thrill of gay liberation early on, you know, with the struggle of AIDS later on.
So that’s the way that I came to it and then it just took me a few decades to figure it out, you know. (Laughs.)
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah. I read that you had interviewed some 200 people for the – for the book.
Dr. Gooch: Right.
Mr. Ratevosian: Were there any revelations or insights that were new to you as you were following and as your lives intersected in the – in this –
Dr. Gooch: Well, one thing that’s interesting is that – and this happened with Frank O’Hara, who died young. I mean, Keith was so young that of the people who survived, you know, they’re in their sixties and seventies. They’re still very much here.
So it was like a work of history and biography and like a work of journalism in that way, and the main thing that I discovered was that there are always kind of talking heads who tell the main stories but then eventually everybody – then if you talk to people who had less contact with Haring but then you hear things that haven’t been mentioned before and it gets a kind of richness.
I mean, one of these was in terms of ACT UP later on. Peter Staley, who was the treasurer at that point, told me that Keith used to give money. I mean, he said, I have kind of a cash business now, come by. And Peter Staley would go to Keith’s studio and Keith would give him bags of cash, like, $10,000 and Peter would go put it in the ACT UP account, and he said that in 1989 a third of the receipts at ACT UP were covered by Keith Haring.
I mean, that was something that was completely under the radar and you just find out by talking to someone.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah, and ACT UP remains very much active these days, still in New York and important as ever.
As you said, Brad, he was deeply aware of the AIDS epidemic. He was – especially at the end of his own life, I mean, his own mortality he was very aware. In his journal I read that he wrote, “I’m quite aware of the chance I have or will have AIDS. I know my days are numbered. Work is all I have and art is more important than life,” Keith wrote.
So that sense of urgency fueled him and it ultimately became a weapon in the fight against silence and stigma that he used. How do you think Keith Haring, if he was alive today, would respond to the moment that we’re in?
Dr. Gooch: Well, he would respond. (Laughs.) I mean, you know – I mean, we miss him in that way and he always – he responded to everything. I mean, the – again, writing biography you find out that the – you know, what’s the Wordsworth line, the child is father to the man or the woman?
You know, Keith was at the first Earth Day protest when he was twelve years old at the Kutztown State campus. The Three Mile Island nuclear accident happened not far from Kutztown and he, again, was at the first sort of demonstration against nuclear proliferation and this was before he had moved to New York.
And so he was always responding to issues and responding to apartheid and gay liberation, and so he would definitely be responding and in some ways more easily. I mean, he seemed to be social media before there was social media. I mean, he was sending out messages. That’s what he was interested in.
In the SVA college journal of his he said the medium is not the message. The message is the message. So as an artist he was very interested in communication and more so, I think, than a lot of the irony that was taking place and favored in art almost when he first came to New York City.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah. Thanks for that.
I want to come back to imagining how Keith would have responded to this moment that we’re in, the anti-LGBTQ sentiment that we’re seeing – the anti-science, anti-truth, really, that surrounds us and I want to come back to how Keith may have responded. But I want to bring in Martha.
Martha, we’ve talked about Keith Haring being at the height of his activism in 1985, around HIV specifically around 1985. I want to shift perspectives and go back to your hometown.
You’re from Zambia. What was the situation like back then as Keith was active here in New York City? Take us back and what do you remember about the HIV epidemic in Zambia in the mid-1980s?
Martha Sichone Cameron: Yeah. Well, the HIV epidemic was just starting in Zambia. It was very quiet. We were hearing stories from the U.S. and one of the things I think that was a through line from the U.S. was just the stigma that was associated with it.
Zambia being actually a Christian, you know, nation and conservative, and so for the people that were getting diagnosed it was very, very heavily stigmatized. In the U.S. it was being considered or being talked about as a plague for the LGBT community and so you can imagine when it came to Africa it was in the heterosexual community but was still very, very heavily stigmatized.
Those were the early days. I was – I think in 1985 I was in fifth grade but by 1990 we had people coming to the schools to talk about HIV. In fact, there was a young man called Winstone Zulu that used to be brought to the schools to essentially be displayed as a person living with HIV and they were starting a lot of prevention campaigns.
But really we were getting to the height of the epidemic. At that time they were saying maybe one out of every five people had HIV and, of course, I started losing a lot of people that I knew. I always say my generation. Very few of us can say that we still have our parents because not only did we lose our parents but Zambia was considered the cradle of the orphan crisis due to HIV.
We had more orphans per capita than any other sub-Saharan African country. I have counted now – I lost about half of my entire family – extended family, meaning, you know, immediate – cousins, aunts and uncles. And, of course, my mother ended up passing in 1998. (Inaudible) – converted in 2003.
Mr. Ratevosian: 2003, so right at the start of PEPFAR at that time period.
And you came to this country in 2009, I think, if I remember correctly.
Ms. Cameron: Yes.
Mr. Ratevosian: Right about – by that point, we had a second PEPFAR reauthorization. This is the global HIV/AIDS program. How did you first encounter Keith’s art or how did you first hear about Keith Haring?
Ms. Cameron: Well, I’ve got to say – I don’t want us to miss this – I was one of the first recipients of PEPFAR.
Mr. Ratevosian: PEPFAR, yeah.
Ms. Cameron: I was – the time I was diagnosed in 2003 my CD4 count was two – zero two – and I was, you know, very close to death, and I always want to emphasize that point because PEPFAR literally saved my life and I believe saved a nation, and that’s why for me this moment is so critical.
In 2009 – by the time I was coming in 2009 not only had I recovered but I had also gotten married and ended up having two children – two boys – that were free of HIV. My second son, who was born here in the United States, actually turns fourteen today.
And so when we speak about this moment it is really critical to show how far we have come. When I came in 2009 it was just at the beginning of Obama’s term and we were – you know, we had – there had been a lot of advocacy leading up to the development of a national HIV/AIDS strategy and then leading up to the first conference – the first international AIDS conference being held here in the U.S.
And one of the first things that you’re told as an HIV advocate there are two things that you need to know, the Denver Principles and ignorance equals silence equals death, and that was because of the history in which Keith advocated in relation to the silence that had ensued from the Reagan administration.
In fact, when you guys were talking about this earlier there’s actually a chapter, and when you read about how Keith responded to Reagan’s presidency and reelection and what was going on in terms of HIV I wish we could replicate that now in terms of the activism that is needed to save lives.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah, and art became such a powerful vehicle for resistance, to raise awareness about different issues. I want to ask you both why do you think art is such a powerful force? What lessons can we learn from Haring’s activism through art that are – that we could apply today?
Brad, I’ll start with you and then I’ll go to Martha.
Dr. Gooch: I mean, one of the great shows of Haring’s work was called “The Political Line” and so he – you know, he always had that, as I was talking about, emphasis on the message. The other thing is that he always just began where he was.
So you were talking about the first Reagan campaign of 1980. I mean, Keith was a kid basically and hadn’t done anything but he did these cut ups of headlines especially having to do with the Pope, and then, like, New York Post headline, “Pope flees rally.” He would do this kind of cut up and then he would get on his bicycle and put them up all over town and then he would kind of enjoy watching people rip them off and getting wheat paste on them. (Laughter.)
You know, he was thriving, in a sense, on this kind of one-to-one response and he certainly had no power and no platform of his own particularly. In the 1984 campaign, which was much more a losing proposition, by this time he was doing the subway art and, you know, and a lot of it was then turned over to vote – to get out the vote and different – he invented this sort of zero dollar bill that the Statue of Liberty was holding that was burning.
So he had – he found language – visual language – and that’s just, you know, very powerful for communicating. So I think the, you know, a couple things about it but one is certainly he didn’t feel – he never felt powerless and he always just started where he was.
I mean, when he was at the School of Visual Arts people would get kind of annoyed with him because you couldn’t open a closet that there wasn’t a Keith Haring in, and his friend Kenny Scharf said people were kind of angry at Keith because he was promoting himself. And he said, but Keith just wasn’t waiting for permission. Everyone was waiting for permission and he just would go ahead.
And I think that’s the – that part of it is inspiring in the way that he just worked wherever he was. When he was doing – and he becomes more a global art star, in a way, and he’s doing a project in Vienna with Jenny Holzer and those safe sex drawings on the bus stops and is arrested for that. But that was his modality that way. So –
Mr. Ratevosian: I love that. So it was art as a visual language and he didn’t wait for permission to act. That’s –
Dr. Gooch: Right. Right. And that – I mean, that’s where – you asked about what Keith would be doing today. It’s almost impossible to know because he was kind of a genius and especially at coming up with visual language for things, right, that would really kind of stick.
Mr. Ratevosian: Martha, why do you think art is such a powerful voice – a powerful medium?
Ms. Cameron: Well, I believe it’s so powerful because it’s almost uncensored. In the day that we’re living in right now where there’s a lot of misinformation as well as basically a taking over of mediums of communication and there’s really no freedom, I believe art is a powerful, powerful tool to express what is going on for the masses.
You know, you talked about Keith maybe not feeling powerless. I think at the beginning of this year and most certainly after the executive orders were announced that was the feeling we got in the HIV community, and I’m speaking about this not just here in the U.S. It’s a global reaction.
We are – I mean, the fear that was coming from a lot of people, and then just the impact of what has happened in terms of jobs and people showing up to get medication and not being able to access it, not necessarily because it wasn’t there but sometimes because the people who were supposed to give it had been initially asked to stay home.
Mr. Ratevosian: This is as a result of the executive orders that have led to PEPFAR programs being frozen, yeah.
Ms. Cameron: Yeah, being frozen, as well as USAID programs.
Mr. Ratevosian: USAID. Right.
Ms. Cameron: And so there’s a lot going on there. I have never in my life actually felt a sense of fear and did not know where to turn to sometimes to get information that was correct.
We have an amazing HIV advocacy community and we’re looking to some of those platforms to understand what is happening with the Ryan White CARE Act, what is happening with PEPFAR, what will happen with PEPFAR.
And as you’re saying, even with the research, I mean, I sit here today, a person living with HIV that has benefited from research that has led to amazing medication where you can take a pill a day like I do. You know, some people are taking injections now over two months.
I have, like I said, two beautiful children that were born HIV free. This is real science. It’s not science – it’s evidence-based science that you can see. And so we sit here and we wonder how we should respond, and I think the activism that Keith contributed to ACT UP is kind of what we need to see right now. We’re fighting for our lives and fighting for the lives of people in the Global South that sometimes don’t have a voice.
Mr. Ratevosian: And this is happening now. We’re talking – we’re not talking about 1987, right? We’re talking about 2025.
So let me just drill down on this advocacy piece because one of the things that we have seen as a result of the executive orders that you mentioned that have come out since January 20 is a kind of re-energy. Like, there’s been a new kind of energy that has almost, you know, has infected the HIV community in a way that we haven’t seen in a long time, you know, and I think many of us have gone to the streets to protest. There’s more organized in the coming weeks.
As someone who’s worked across borders on both domestic HIV issues like Ryan White advocacy and PEPFAR advocacy what do you think is the state of HIV activism now and how do we change or what must we change to adapt to the times that we’re in? It’s not an easy question.
Ms. Cameron: It’s a big question. We stand on the shoulders of giants. You know, the people that fought – you know, what you were sharing – the early days of ACT UP. The anger that was there I think really needs to be revitalized because health is a right of every person regardless of who they are or how they identify, and I think that’s something that is really being missed because health is being denied on the basis of many things that are, I think – well, let’s just say, in a sense, are inhuman.
We need to get angry. We need to fight. We need to advocate, because there’s a whole generation coming ahead of us who – you know, we’re talking about seeing an end to the HIV epidemic to AIDS by 2030 and that’s not going to happen in terms of what is happening now.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
It’s a perfect segue to one other question I wanted to ask Brad before opening it up to the audience. We have time for a couple questions from the audience.
You mentioned the next generation. You have two beautiful, young, healthy boys.
Brad, you’ve written in your book that Keith was deeply committed to inspiring younger generations both, you know, through his work and drawing murals in schools all around the world, collaborating with young artists, establishing the Keith Haring Foundation which prioritizes children in its giving.
Why do you think that was such a central part of his mission and how do you see his work influencing the younger generation of people including myself?
Dr. Gooch: Two parts. One, I mean, when you were saying that – when I was coming here today I found in the Keith journal the simplest statement almost of what we’re talking about. He said, the only way to deal with something negative is to change it, turn it into positive action. So that’s the impulse there.
In terms of children, I mean, it’s kind of great. You know, Keith had this – his main message was art is for everybody and he opened up the art world in a way and was very inclusive, not just in the symbology of the art but in bringing in people in into see art.
So his first show in 1982 Tony Shafrazi Gallery was covered on the CBS Evening News because there were thousands of kids and Black kids and street kids and who had never been in a gallery, I mean, up until that point.
So he was changing not just the art in terms of the freshness of it but who was part of it, and part of that was that he did coloring books for kids and so there were also kids there who were on the floor coloring in at that first opening. And that’s important because I think that he wasn’t just sentimental about kids. He was – he really saw them as another group who art could speak to and in that kind of equal way.
And so he – you know, he always had that immediacy kind of with kids and, certainly, because I’m married and have two children now that, I mean, in writing this book I was always aware that this was the moment that Keith was made for – I mean, to be married, to have gay marriage, to have children. There was a kind of longing there, I think, in a way too that it made sense that – for that kind of experience. So both of those were active.
The other thing is his main logo, his tag, was the crawling baby with these radiant lines coming out of them where I got my title from. One critic called it the first believable 20th century halo because Keith would talk about how babies are humanity in the purest form – life in the purest form. And so that sense that there is purity and some kind of innocence there and that it keeps renewing itself that was a through line of his work.
Ms. Cameron: And it’s a through line now, too. You know, when I was kind of reading the book and also looking online – I think I shared this with you – I discovered that the Keith Haring Foundation is now working with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation of which I’m an ambassador.
So I was really, like, just really touched about that because children are always left behind. You know, no one is there to talk for them. At the AIDS conference last year we saw how even in the response children are lagging behind in terms of the MDG goals and all that stuff.
So that is really, really important to me, too, and I know that as you share not only did he just talk about it, he did so many things for children and did so many exhibits and did, you know, things where children were involved. So –
Mr. Ratevosian: I love watching or seeing, you know, young kids under ten wearing a Keith Haring shirt or shopping for Keith Haring merchandise. It’s always so fascinating to me knowing how symbolic some of the work is.
So anyway, thank you both for that. We have, looking at the clock here, about ten minutes. Then we’re going to open it up to the audience for some questions. I believe we have a roving mic so if you have a question for Brad or Martha please raise your hand and we’ll come to you.
Question: Hi. Barbara de Zalduondo (ph).
I’m wondering to what extent Keith engaged with or was affected by the AIDS quilt, because to me in my work on HIV over the years his work and the AIDS quilt broke a barrier to understanding and accepting the emotional impact of the epidemic and made it possible to talk about it. Also made families able to engage and do something to memorialize their lost loves.
Mr. Ratevosian: Thanks so much. Great t-shirt you’ve got on there. Very of the times. Yeah.
Brad, do you want to take that one?
Dr. Gooch: Yeah. I’m not aware of anything specific with the AIDS quilt with Keith Haring but it’s a parallel, I guess, that, you know, he was creating then work that was public and that articulated that there was a crisis going on that people could connect with, because we were coming out of a time where the president would never use the word AIDS or wouldn’t use the word gay.
So this kind of erasing that something was going on or a denial that something was going on was one of the more powerful forces to react against, and so both the quilt and the sort of silence equals death paintings and posters and t-shirts and the safe sex campaign, all of that was putting out there that this was happening and speaking about it and people were emboldened by that, I think, and reassured by that.
Mr. Ratevosian: And the AIDS quilt still remains powerful even until today. This past World AIDS Day we had a major display on the South Lawn of the White House and –
Ms. Cameron: For the first time.
Mr. Ratevosian: First time ever, and many of us were there. It was very powerful to see. And President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden were very emotional as they were addressing the audience. So the power of the quilt remains as important as ever.
Do we have – Martha, yeah, please comment.
Ms. Cameron: No, I just wanted to say and also the way he expressed pain, you know, in some of the pictures that he drew in response to when his friends died as he watched, you know, people die, and I think there’s a portrait that was unfinished – deliberately unfinished – and people have interpreted that too, you know, just in many different ways. I mean, his unfinished life or, you know, the way people died so young.
So I think you’re right about the parallel and how powerful both are in expressing, you know, a lot of things that are just so real and painful about the epidemic.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah. Let’s take a couple more questions.
Steve, you’re – I see one over here. Yeah.
Question: Thank you.
In listening to you I’m struck by how in the ’80s as this epidemic was unfolding, for the arts and culture community centered in New York City this was an existential crisis. This was a source of terror and chaos, a feeling of abandonment and marginalization, and it was also a period of massive change in the art world itself.
Haring was sort of in both, right? He was taking to the streets. He was radicalizing art. He was popularizing art. But there was also this movement that emerged in the midst of all this desperation around HIV that demanded more, that really moved out.
This was an exceptional period of the convergence of an epidemic, the terror associated with that and a movement within the art world that really changed the norms. If you could say a bit about that, Brad.
Mr. Ratevosian: Thanks so much, Steve.
Dr. Gooch: Yeah. Well, I think – I mean, it’s interesting what happened. At the end of the book I went and talked to Ann Temkin, the curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, and the question was why had they never shown Keith Haring during his lifetime and why had they not acquired any art by Keith Haring.
And she was just saying at that time there was a distinction between high art or – and low art, and low art was anything that was political, anything that was gay, anything that was funny. You know, there was a kind of hermetic sense about art.
And also I interviewed Diego Cortez who was a curator of an early show that Keith was in and he said, well, when Keith and I first came to New York the art world and the galleries were White people in white rooms drinking white wine. (Laughs.)
So he was, you know, not only changing – you know, doing fresh art and doing a different kind of messaging but as you were talking about in your question also changing the means of distribution so that – so you could get art for everybody. That was his experiment. That’s why he was working in the subways and elsewhere.
So it was a – there was a political kind of uprising going on and there was also a change of the – of what – in art and culture. So that all – and she said when I talked to her, I mean, all that has disappeared. And when Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat died I remember in the early ’90s there was this feeling that that was it. I mean, they were – they had been part of a scene and the scene was over and they were going to disappear, and for a few years it seemed that that was possible.
And then there’s this – they’ve definitely endured and now really represent that period, I think. So these – that in itself, I think, is reassuring, I mean, that people do tend to gravitate towards what endures or what endures is what people actually respond to, and it takes a while sometimes for art movements and social movements and political movements to really cohere. But there’s some hope there. Yeah.
Ms. Cameron: And if I could quickly add to those, also a deeply personal part to this where, you know, towards the end you talk about how his family or Keith with his family never really talked about AIDS. You know, he never actually even really – I mean, he did end up sharing that he had it but even at his death, you know, bed, you know, they could never really talk about AIDS. And that stigma still persists and also more so even now in the time that we’re in where it’s associated with – you know, there’s sort of a triple double phobia in terms of the stigma related to HIV as well as the LGBT community.
Mr. Ratevosian: Thank you for sharing that, Martha.
I think we have one more question on this side of the room.
Jack, you’ve got your hand up. Let’s take two more questions and then we could come back for one last round.
Question: Hi. I just wanted to start off by saying thank you all both so much for coming to speak here.
HIV/AIDS and global health policy is a dynamic and evolving field overall but under the current administration it’s facing a lot of backlash and undermining, and I was predominantly curious as to how students like myself can get involved in working in related policy and wanting to make a change in that arena.
Mr. Ratevosian: Great. Martha, please take this one.
Yeah, we want young students to remain active in global health. So, yeah.
Ms. Cameron: Well, you know, and part of what Keith Haring – the baby picture was always used to denote hope and one of the things that we know about HIV policy in this country it has been absolutely bipartisan.
Eventually, you know, after Reagan came around and maybe the next government, the Ryan White CARE Act was enacted to serve people living with HIV and then later on, of course, PEPFAR was also enacted to help the Global South and both of these big policies have been bipartisan.
And so – and I think that’s something that I actually gained by reading this is that there’s always hope, right? There’s always hope. There’s always something to hold on to. We always want to believe that there is some humanity at the core of every person, and I think as you get engaged as a student or as you read policy one of the things is really ensuring that it starts from a human rights perspective.
I think that even as we’re dealing with what is going on right now we don’t know what is going to happen in the next ninety days but we know that people have a right to health and a right to care and treatment.
And so if you can start from that perspective as we look at the next ninety days we hope that you can engage in the kind of scholarship and, you know, health policy that starts from a human rights perspective.
Mr. Ratevosian: Well said.
One final question and then we’ll wrap up here.
Question: Hi, there. I’m Jack MacAllister, very recently ex-USAID employee who was working on PEPFAR.
My question is about communication, and I’ve been thinking a lot over the last month that the HIV community and those of us who have been responding to it over the last few decades is at this point so big and beautiful, and I think in many ways a lot of the communication we’ve been doing has been amongst ourselves and to ourselves and to constituencies that are sympathetic to the cause and the messages that we’re delivering.
But I think now we find ourselves at a moment in time where we have to think about how to better communicate with those who aren’t predisposed to being sympathetic to these issues, and I think about, you know, my question, I suppose, with respect to Keith Haring is what lessons can we drive from those early days of communicating with the broader world, those for whom HIV is not at the top of their mind.
And then just in general it sometimes feels like we kind of have to start again a little bit and I’m just looking for some words of wisdom on how we can be approaching communicating with the country, with the world, with policy makers, and how that needs to be maybe different than how we’ve been doing it over the last couple of decades and how should we be approaching that, given the situation that we find ourselves in?
Thanks.
Mr. Ratevosian: Great question. So much – thanks so much, Jack, and thanks for your service at USAID as well.
I would love to hear from both of you on those two very important questions.
Dr. Gooch: Well, I think that the – I mean, with – the Keith Haring part, again, I come back to that he just worked where he was. I mean, he wasn’t really looking for, although he gained one, a kind of global platform but he was really sort of on the streets and communicating in the language that people were speaking at that time.
I mean, when I talked about the “Clones go home” I mean, he was very personal and unpretentious and I think that – and the advantage of art in that way and these images is that it’s not even – there’s an emotion to it and an ambiguity to the communication and a, you know, personal kind of humanity to it that makes it a little more accessible.
Like, you can’t necessarily look at a Keith Haring work always and say, oh, he’s saying this. I mean, he purposely didn’t title things so that people could find a way in, and everyone is not Keith Haring but I think –
Mr. Ratevosian: Martha, where do we go from here in terms of communication?
Ms. Cameron: Well, there’s a lot and I think you’re absolutely right, and I’m really sorry to hear about your job. I mean, we’ve been hearing so many stories including for me one recently of a suicide because of a loss of a job.
This is real. It’s not – you know, it’s very real that this is happening and it’s very scary. For me, when you said where do we go the power of storytelling that gets it out there. The reason I do what I do is because nobody can deny my story.
Nobody can deny that I was diagnosed with HIV over twenty years ago and nobody can deny that I have had two beautiful children because of science, because of research that was done.
And I think our HIV community needs to go back to activism, being agitators and being advocates – all three. We’re encouraging our community to go speak to their Congress people, to senators, and tell their stories so that it becomes real again.
We had a protest or an advocacy march where people were trained in civil disobedience and money was raised for bond because if that’s what it will take that’s what it will take, you know, for us to fight for our lives. This is real. It’s not a drill, as they say.
And so there are many different forms of activism. Like I said, not everybody is a Keith Haring but we are calling, especially on artists who are not censored right now, who, you know can use mediums, can use messages, in different ways to get the message out there, to get the stories out there, so that people can realize that we are real as a community of people living with HIV and this is a real issue that we’re dealing with, and that we do need the treatment both here and globally for people living with HIV.
And so there’s – you know, I talked about the Denver Principles earlier which demand just living and eventually dying in dignity, you know, and all those young gay men asked for at that conference was to be recognized as people living with HIV.
There’s nothing more that I can do except express the fact that, hey, I am here. I am a person with HIV and you are denying me something that is a right of mine for my generation and for generations to come. If I don’t continue on my treatment there’s so many repercussions including death, and I really believe that silence does actually equal death.
Mr. Ratevosian: Yeah. Thank you, Martha, for that.
You know, we’ve talked about art being such a powerful source of healing, of resistance, of hope. Martha, you mentioned hope.
And, Brad, you write in the book Keith believed wholeheartedly in the magic of art. As we look to the future – I want to end on a positive note – what gives you each – what’s your source of optimism during these very difficult times?
Dr. Gooch: Well, what you just said. I mean, Keith, obviously, wasn’t a decorative artist and he really felt that these actions and the making of art were changing the world.
So he painted the Berlin Wall at a certain point and then they – and the next day, you know, some kids came up and covered it over with graffiti and he was asked how he felt about this and he said, well, it doesn’t matter because you’re really painting on the walls of the mind that are in South Africa or in Nicaragua or something.
I mean, he – and also when he did murals in children’s hospitals, which he did in D.C. and he did in Atlanta and in New York and in Paris, it wasn’t that he sort of even felt that, oh, this will cheer them up. I mean, he really felt that this will help to heal them, and at the end of his life I think part of his ramping up – I mean, instead of melting away he just did more and more and more work and part of it, I think, was his sense that that’s why he was alive.
And so that kind of connection to that it’s what’s keeping you alive. I mean, that’s what you’re saying with silence equals death. When Keith was diagnosed – and this was a time when Rock Hudson was dying of AIDS and refusing to say it and Roy Cohn was claiming that he had kidney cancer – you know, obituaries never give causes of death, that he gave a big interview with Rolling Stone magazine as a person with AIDS and that that’s why he did it and he broke that silence and it was important.
Mr. Ratevosian: That penultimate chapter in your book is called “Silence Equals Death” and –
Dr. Gooch: Right. And the last chapter was called “You Use Whatever Comes Along,” and that was also a sense what I was kind of talking about, that he would work with any surface and any opportunity.
Mr. Ratevosian: Martha, I’m going to give you the final word to bring us home with some inspiration and hope. What gives you hope?
Ms. Cameron: Yeah. Just the fact that we’re alive today for such a time as this. You know, whenever I sit here I’m not just representing myself. I’m representing so many people out there. And if there’s a message I want to tell everybody is that you are alive today. You’re standing in the – on the shoulders of giants. So you got to do – got to out there and do whatever it takes.
Mr. Ratevosian: Thank you so much for sharing that.
Thank you. Thank you both for the very insightful conversation. I don’t think I realized how much I needed this conversation today just for inspiration to remind ourselves of how far we’ve come but also how much more work there is to do. And, Brad, thanks for bringing Keith’s life back into our consciousness.
I want to end on a quote that you’ve already shared but it was one that I also – that stood out to me, which was what Keith said about the only way to deal with something negative is to change it and to turn it into positive action. It’s very, very powerful. Those words ring true today just as Keith feels alive with us today, so thank you for that.
We are going to adjourn here. For those of us who are – for those who are in the room please join us for a reception just outside the door. As Steve mentioned, we also have East City Books who’s kind enough to make some books available and, Brad, I’m going to put you on the spot and say you’re going to be signing some books. So please take advantage of that opportunity.
A special thanks to Katherine Bliss, to Priya Chainani, Steve Morrison, and the entire CSIS team for making today’s event possible, and thank you to the audience for being here and those of you online as well.
Let’s take Keith’s words to heart and turn today’s inspiration into positive action. So thank you again, everyone. (Applause.)
(END.)