In all the other galleries of the Block Museum I could take pictures, but not this one: “Keep the Shadow Ere the Substance Fade.” Maybe that name is what drew me to it. I was not allowed to visually preserve my experience for further review, which somehow made it seem mysterious. What is it hiding? “Mourning during the AIDS Crisis,” apparently. I wasn’t expecting this, and after reading the gallery’s opening remarks I stepped inside the glass door into a fairly small, one-room gallery space. The intimacy of space itself seemed to echo the subject matter; gathered on every wall were mementos or art, kept or created, to remember and mourn the dead or dying.

The first wall of the gallery was not related to the AIDS Crisis in any way; to my surprise, Victorian era relics of mourning dotted the interior of a glass case. Photographs, framed locks of hair, and brooches of the dead collected by the once living lay before me. The text beside the case explained that the prevalence of high infant mortality rates and deadly diseases made death and “mourning a tangible event with communities and an integral part of Victorian Culture.” Also, people tended to die in their homes, so the proximity and frequency of death made mourning a tradition shared by all. The next wall furthered the dialogue, explaining that “[d]uring the 20^th century, the process of dying was increasingly regulated to the sterile realm of the hospital and the impersonal space of the funeral parlor.” Mourning became highly personal and private, which is still how I perceive mourning today. Funerals might bring people together, but truly emotional mourning is done alone as deaths are primarily isolated incidents. However, the AIDS Crisis recreated this Victorian notion of communal mourning within the LGBTQ community because it brought with it consistent death.

Though the gallery is small, it offers a lot of emotional weight and representation. I’ve studied the AIDS Crisis through a social justice lens, discussing how it showed the failings of society to acknowledge and respect the LGBTQ community, but I never thought of only in terms of mourning. My history lessons treated those who died as almost martyrs for the cause, and never slowed down enough to appreciate each as a husband, friend, or son. At first the gallery displayed photos in tribute of the fit, gay, male stereotypes that emerged in the 1970s. A Robert Mapplethorpe photo of a strong young man, rippling with muscles, posing to show off the power of his jaw and phallus, stared back at me. His power seems impenetrable, which makes the reality of the HIV virus more potent, more devastating. As the gallery describes, it’s the “the deterioration of the gay male body.” Some David Grieger (a 1990s Leather artist) sketches and correspondences show the heartbreaking juxtaposition between the idealized strong gay male body and it’s steady decline. Based on reading some of the typed letters displayed alongside his blocky drawings of bulky men, I could infer that he got AIDS. I was moved by this intimate proof of the virus, which to me breathed life and personality into my history lessons and learned statistics.

A large banner on the back wall summarizes the community-based mourning that is the thesis of this gallery. The banner titled Traveling Leather Memorial Quilt (1989) is an almost haphazard compilation of fabrics. It towered above my head, taking up the length of the wall, but it did not look imposing. To be honest, it looked like it was designed by a middle-school girl if she didn’t have access to glitter. The background is dark blue canvas and in the top-left corner nine stripes of black, light blue, and white alternate down to the middle. A large red heart is stuck on top of the stripes, mirrored by a big red memorial ribbon in the bottom right corner. In between are six rectangles cut from jean pants sewed in various angles across the cloth. Each pant leg has a city on it, and it goes from Berlin in the bottom left to London in the top right. One pant leg just has a question mark on it, but all belonged to men infected by AIDS across the world. Without context it’s one of those pieces of art that scream “I could do that”—the kind of art that frustrates the everyday museum goer because it feels lazy, like you’ve been scammed out of a life as an artist because obviously you could do that. However, the context, the story, and the heart that went into this piece is something I could never replicate. After Leatherman Mathias Peuser’s partner died of AIDS, he decided to make this quilt “to honor all which still lead a healthy like with the virus. This quilt is to keep the history of those passed alive.” To me, Mathias Peuser’s collaborative quilt as much summed up the gallery experience and reminded me that art is greater than the sum of its parts. The human element behind it is sometimes more important the work it’s self. The light blue jean legs are not just patches of fabric; they are the clothes of dead men that outlived their owner. The cities written on each prove the scope of the death and devastation. The heart, though somewhat cheesy, is a recognizable and universal symbol of love, which has a complicated relationship with HIV because it both inadvertently perpetuates the virus and mourns its existence. To me, this quilt seemed the least aesthetic and skilled piece of the exhibition, but the most meaningful because in its threads is a unique balance of intimacy and community that only exists in tragedy.