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# Who Was Artist David Wojnarowicz? We Find Out
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/who-was-artist-david-wojnarowicz-we-find-out/
- Published: 2018-08-24T21:07:19.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:36:42.000Z
- Description: After two actions led by ACT UP activists encouraged the Whitney Museum to change a wall label, we went looking for people who could tell us who Wojnarowicz was and help us decipher his complex life and art.
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Podcast, ACT UP, AIDS, cynthia carr, David Wojnarowicz, East Village, Whitney Museum of American Art, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/08/wojnarowicz-art-movements-3000.jpg)

David Wojnarowicz (photo by Zachary Small/Hyperallergic)

Last month, a dozen activists gathered at the Whitney Museum of Art to condemn the institution’s lack of modern context about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in relation to Wojnarowicz’s artwork. Their action was noticed by the art world and the museum, which is continuing to talk to the protesters after changing a label to reflect on the fact that the AIDS crisis is not over.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/08/act-up-whitney-protest-4-1460-1.jpg)

ACT UP activist in front of a work by Wojnarowicz at the Whiney Museum retrospective (all images by and courtesy Michelle Wild at www.mwildsstudio.com)

In [this episode](https://simplecast.com/s/1a817761?ref=hyperallergic.com) we talk to Wojnarowicz biographer Cynthia Carr, author of [*Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz*](https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Belly-Times-David-Wojnarowicz-ebook/dp/B007N6JFKA/?tag=hyperallergic-20&ref=hyperallergic.com), who helps narrate the complicated story of an artist who has become one of the luminaries of New York’s East Village scene in the 1980s. I also invited two artists, [Jean Foos](https://jeanfoos.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and [Frank Holliday](http://frankholliday.net/?ref=hyperallergic.com), who knew Wojnarowicz during his lifetime, to help paint a picture of a scene that burned bright, but was eventually snuffed out by a commercial art world obsessed with novelty, and the looming disaster that was AIDS.

A special thanks to Twig Twig for the music to this week’s episode. You can listen to that and more at [twigtwig.bandcamp.com](https://twigtwig.bandcamp.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com) and other streaming services.

This and more in our current episode of our weekly [Art Movements](https://hyperallergic.com/tag/art-movements-podcast/) podcast.

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