“The Summer of ’82”

Curated by Dan Cameron, this group exhibition is meant as an elegy for a pair of intertwining cultural moments in early ’80s New York: The emergence of a boisterous art scene in lower Manhattan; and the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, which ended a golden age of gay liberation that had begun with the Stonewall uprising of 1969. The season cited in Cameron’s title was the period in which possibilities slammed up against limitations. While AIDS had already emerged as an issue by 1982, only 200 cases had been reported at the time, and it was yet unclear as to which direction the disease would take—something that became depressingly clear in short order. In the meantime, the East Village was exploding with new galleries such as Fun Gallery and Nature Morte, and performance venues like Club 57, which would soon succumb to the onslaught of gentrification. With a roster of 19 artists including David Wojnarowicz, Kenny Scharf, Becky Howland and Jane Dickson, “The Summer of ’82” looks back to what turned out to be a last hurrah for artistic and sexual freedom before plague and global capitalism transformed the city into the corporatized entity it is today.