Up Against the Wall: Art, Activism, and the AIDS Poster offers nearly 200 examples of visually arresting and socially meaningful posters, taken from more than 8,000 held in the collection in the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries’ Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation. The collection, one of the largest of its kind in the world, was donated to the University of Rochester by Dr. Edward Atwater. The book accompanies an exhibition of AIDS education posters displayed at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

The posters, spanning the years from 1982 to the present, show how social, religious, civic, and public health agencies have addressed the controversial, often contested terrain of the HIV/AIDS pandemic within the public realm. Organizations and creators tailored their messages to audiences, both broad and very specific, and used a wide array of strategies, employing humor, emotion, scare tactics, simple scientific explanations, sexual imagery, and many other methods to communicate powerfully and effectively.

Gold medalist in the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards, category: US Northeast – Best Regional Non-Fiction
Gold medalist in the 2022 Foreword INDIES Awards, category: Popular Culture

About the Editors
Donald Albrecht is an independent curator and author based in New York City. His exhibitions and books have ranged from overviews of cultural trends to profiles of individual designers, architects, and photographers. Jessica Lacher-Feldman is the exhibitions and special projects manager, and is the curator of record for the AIDS Education Posters Collection in the Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, at the University of Rochester. Dr. William M. Valenti is an infectious diseases specialist in Rochester, NY, and the co-founder of Community Health Network, now Trillium Health.

About the Exhibition
An exhibition of the same name was on view at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, March 6–June 19, 2022. Visit the MAG website to learn more.
A companion exhibition was on view at RIT University Gallery, March 14–April 8, 2022. Visit the University Gallery website to learn more.