Professor Rory Crath will present a collaboration with Annette-Carina van der Zaag and a group of QT/BIPOC artists and thinkers at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City on October 24, 2025 from 2-6:30 p.m.
Said the MoMA, "The symposium celebrates the lives and legacies of artists documented in the Visual AIDS Archive, the largest collection of images and biographical information about HIV-positive artists."
The announcement continued, "The second part of the symposium is organized by Annette-Carina van der Zaag and Rory Crath, in collaboration with Visual AIDS, as part of the Terra Foundation for American Art–supported project Aesthetics of Ruination. The project began as a collective exploration of the work of two artists lost to AIDS—Robert Farber (1948–1995), whose Western Blot series invokes the imagery of the bubonic plague, and Ronald Lockett (1965–1998), whose assemblages incorporate salvaged industrial materials. Scholars and artists who participated in the project will invite the audience to engage the HIV/AIDS archive as an archive of feeling and sensing. Through presentations and performances—with each one refracting differently its own relation to the sculptural works and practices of these artists—the Aesthetics of Ruination collective will explore how “feeling backwards and waywards” can envision alternative, more livable futures."
To learn more visit the MoMA website.
