First observed on December 1, 1989, to coincide with World AIDS Day, A Day Without Art called on museums, galleries, and cultural institutions to close, shroud artworks, or suspend programming to mourn the loss of artists to AIDS and demand greater public awareness. The event was one of many projects produced by Visual AIDS, a New York-based collective of arts professionals founded the previous year to help document and raise awareness about the virus and its impact on the cultural sector. Virtually all major New York City art institutions took part in Day Without Art from its inception. That year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art removed Picasso’s Portrait of Gertrude Stein from view, the Museum of Modern Art hosted a special Leonard Bernstein musical tribute, and the Whitney Museum of American Art (along with numerous galleries) closed or shrouded artworks in solidarity. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum also marked the day by draping a large black sash over its facade as a symbol of mourning. In subsequent years, Day Without Art—later “Day With(out) Art”—continued to be widely observed across the city’s cultural institutions, with no notable holdouts among major museums, as the focus shifted from symbolic closures to proactive arts programming and commemoration. This poster incorporates a blurred photograph of José Luis Cortes, a Puerto Rican artist living with HIV. He was one of the first artists documented by the Visual AIDS’s Archive Project that aimed to preserve the work and stories of artists living with the virus. The accompanying description outlines the program’s services—documentation, exhibitions, and referrals—as part of a broader effort to combat the cultural erasure of people with AIDS.