There are a lot of exciting things going on at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum so it is very easy to look over the small, one-room exhibit nestled away on the second floor.

The exhibit, Keep the Shadow, Ere the Substance Fade: Mourning During the AIDS Crisis is curated by 2015-16 Block Museum Graduate Fellow C.C. McKee and focuses on mourning practices by communities affected by the disease and how these compare to mourning practices of 19^th century Victorian Britain.

The exhibit does a very good job at saying a lot in a little space. Every description on the wall gives information that helps place the viewer in the historical context of the time. McKee does not have all of the space in the world to take us back in time, on a journey through the 19^th century and the 80s, but he makes up for this by providing the viewer with insight throughout the exhibit.

The exhibit begins in Victorian Britain. In just one small glass case McKee exhibits objects kept to aid in the morning of young children who commonly died of diseases during the era. We learn that back then, mourning was a community event, an important part of culture, something that changed with the modernization of medicine.

In the 20^th century, dying became more personal and mourning relics more rare. No longer did people keep the hair clippings and possessions of the dead to turn into jewelry and decoration. The large death toll of the wars forced society to experience death differently.

McKee tells this story in words and backs it up with art and artifacts. You see the hair of a dead girl turned into a wreath. It’s chilling to see the old, faded out photos of people who died to young. The exhibit than takes a turn as it enters into the 20^th century and begins to explore the death toll of the AIDS crisis.

Once again the narrative turns towards community, the LGBTQ community specifically, trying to get through the crisis running rampant through their population. McKee discusses “AIDs aesthetics,” the communities attempt to “retain the deceased physical presence through objects.” The idea is similar to the practices of mourners in Victorian Britain, but this AIDS aesthetic is much more political and much more artistic. The death their facing is controversial, so they use their art to remember, but also to speak to the public.

This small exhibit covers so much. It explores many of the norms and patterns of LGBT culture during the rise of AIDs and throughout the crisis. We start looking at race, seeing how one photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, “captures the idealized gay male bodies” and “invites the viewer to question how the artist eroticizes his black and gay sitters differently”(McKee). While both men are extremely muscular ­– a nod towards the “idealized gay male bodies…in the years preceding the rise of HIV,” the black man is much more shy, turned away from the camera, hiding himself. In contrast, the white model, while turned to show his profile, is flaunting his body and his sexuality.

“Hey Buddy, it’s for you,” created 10 years after Mapplethorpe’s photos, shows how the AIDs crisis changed gay culture. While the drawing still shows an extremely muscular and sexualized man, he is participating in phone sex, “a ‘low risk’ alternative sex practice during a period in which fear and misinformation about the communicability of HIV was prevalent.” Through this work of art, the viewer is able to experience the atmosphere around sex during a time when homosexuality was clouded by a fear of death and disease.

In this time of suffering, the LGBT community did follow in the footsteps of Victorian Britain and looked towards relics to remember their friends and family who they lost due to AIDs. You can find another glass case in the back of the exhibit resembles that in front, showing off relics to remember the dead. This brings the exhibit full circle, showing how the act of mourning can really be a community experience and Victorian Britain mourning traditions did not die with the creation of modern medicine.

The exhibit ends with a stack of paper in the middle of the floor, ready to be taken by any who wish to participate. It represents “the body ravaged by HIV…but this body is not buried and forgotten like so many AIDS victims. The viewer participated in an act of mourning and remembering, knowingly, or not by taking a piece of paper”(McKee).

I took a piece, but then I threw it out because it was very large and I have no use of it. This made me question the piece. I forgot about the paper until now, but maybe that was the artists point.

The exhibit could have been ten times the size, but McKee took the space he had available and produced a work about mourning across two cultures. While it felt slightly unfinished, and while I walked out wanting more, what I saw was intriguing.