call for research proposals

Research fellows will work with Visual AIDS to develop a piece of original writing for the Visual AIDS website, illuminating the life and work of an artist lost to AIDS.

Fellows will conduct research on artists who have been lost to AIDS, drawing on primary sources in the Visual AIDS Archive Project and other archival collections, as well as interviews with estates, families, and friends.

This year we will award one fellowship focused specifically on Garland Eliason-French (1942–1996), a painter who was one of the first ten artists to join the Visual AIDS Archive in 1994. Three other fellowships will be awarded for research proposals about other artists lost to AIDS.

About the Visual AIDS Archive

The Visual AIDS Archive collects artwork documentation, personal papers, and records pertaining to the lives and work of artists living with HIV and AIDS, as well as those who have passed. The archive was started in 1994 by Frank Moore and David Hirsh as a response to losing not only friends in the AIDS crisis but also the loss of art and materials that often followed. The archive currently exists as 555 artist folders that are made up of artwork documentation (mainly in the form of slide photographs taken by Visual AIDS volunteers during the 1990s), personal papers such as artist statements, CVs, press clippings, exhibition announcements, correspondence with Visual AIDS, and other objects related to the lives and work of these artists. The files also contain a small number of artists' books, artworks on paper, personal photographs, and personal writing. In the spirit of community archives, our donations have come from artist members, estates, friends, and family members.

The Visual AIDS Archive is always open to researchers and the general public by appointment. For more information about our archival holdings and how to schedule a research visit, see here.

Since 2012, the archive has also existed online as the Visual AIDS Artist Registry. The online registry currently features digitized images and biographical information related to 347 artists from the physical archive, along with 418 other artists who have joined or been added digitally