Silence = Death: Reclaiming the Pink Triangle in AIDS-Era New York

The Silence = Death poster, featuring the pink triangle, is one of the most recognizable and evocative images in the fight against AIDS. Designed in 1986 by the Silence=Death Project, a New York City activist art collective later known as Gran Fury, the poster has appeared at countless AIDS demonstrations around the world. Program attendees will hear first-hand from one of its designers, activist Avram Finkelstein, in an intergenerational conversation with historian Dr. Jake Newsome, who will also provide an overview of the pink triangle’s transformation from a Nazi-era symbol to one of LGBTQ liberation. Amanda Davis from the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project will host and there will be time for Q&A from the audience.

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About the Speakers:

THE HISTORIAN: Dr. Jake Newsome is an award winning scholar of German and American LGBTQ+ history whose research and resources educate global audiences. He is the Founder and Director of the Pink Triangle Legacies Project, a grassroots initiative that honors the memory of the Nazis queer victims and carries on their legacy by fighting homophobia and transphobia today through education, empowerment, and advocacy. Jake is the author of Pink Triangle Legacies: Coming Out in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Cornell University Press), which traces the transformation of the pink triangle from a Nazi concentration camp badge into a global symbol of LGBTQ+ pride. He lives with his husband and son in San Diego.

THE ACTIVIST: Avram Finkelstein is an artist, writer, and a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. His book After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images (University of California Press) was nominated for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction, and an International Center of Photography 2018 Infinity Award in Critical Writing and Research. Avram’s work has shown at numerous museums and galleries, including the Cooper Hewitt and David Zwirner, and is in the permanent collection of MoMA, the Whitney, the New Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian, the Fogg Museum, the Getty Institute, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

This free virtual program is part of the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project’s “The Historian & The Activist: Cross-Cultural LGBTQ New York” series, made possible by a grant from Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.