Williams College Museum of Art Presents
Felix Gonzalez-Torres "Untitled" (Placebo), 1991
December 1, 2007-March 23, 2008

Williamstown, MA—the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s “Untitled” (Placebo), 1991. This monumental installation, on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, features a single sculpture comprised of 1200 pounds – nearly 40,000 pieces – of silver-wrapped hard candy. This exhibition is being presented in observance of World AIDS Day, December 1, and continues a 16-year tradition at the museum. A gallery talk will be held on Saturday, December 1 at 4:30 pm with Williams Professor C. Ondine Chavoya and visiting scholar Jonathan Katz on the sociopolitical background of Gonzalez-Torres’s work.  This is a free public event and all are invited to attend.

One of Gonzalez-Torres’s “candy spills,” “Untitled” (Placebo), 1991, consists of 1,200 pounds of silver-wrapped hard candy arranged as a stunning carpet on the floor of the museum’s largest gallery.  Visitors are invited to take a candy and in so doing, contribute to the slow disappearance of the sculpture over the course of the exhibition.  Gonzalez-Torres explores similar themes in his stacks of take-away posters, which also depend upon visitors’ participation in the piece.  Though Gonzalez-Torres created “Untitled” (Placebo) in response to the AIDS epidemic and, in particular, the loss of his partner, Ross, his use of an everyday commodity like candy allows viewers to draw their own meanings from each of his works. 

"Over the four months of its unraveling, “Untitled” (Placebo) will give us the chance to reflect not only on the continuing AIDS epidemic, but to contemplate the universal experiences of illness, death and loss that the sculpture in part symbolizes,” says Andrea Gyorody, Williams Graduate Student in the History of Art, Class of 2009. Gyorody is an intern at WCMA and is organizing the presentation of the sculpture at the museum.

An essay focusing on the medical metaphors of “Untitled” (Placebo), written by Gyorody, accompanies the exhibition.  A podcast featuring scholars speaking about Gonzalez-Torres’s work will be available December 1 on the Williams College website: www.williams.edu.

About the artist

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, born in 1957, grew up in Puerto Rico and Cuba before moving to New York City.  He received his BFA from Pratt Institute, attended the prestigious Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, and earned his MFA from New York University and the International Center of Photography. Following his first gallery show at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York in 1991, Gonzalez-Torres has been the subject of many exhibitions, including American and European traveling retrospectives.  Although he died in 1996 of AIDS-related complications, his work has continued to receive international attention.  Most recently, he was selected as the United States representative at the 2007 Venice Bienniale, only the second artist to have ever been chosen posthumously.

About World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day, December 1, was first held in 1988 in order to increase awareness and education about the disease with the aim of stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS. Today, an estimated 1,200,000 persons in the United States are living with HIV/AIDS, with around 25% undiagnosed and unaware of their HIV infection.  Worldwide, an estimated 39.5 million people are living with HIV or AIDS.  Since the identification of HIV/AIDS in 1981, approximately 25 million people have died of AIDS.  For moreinformation, please visit:

http://unaids.org
http://www.avert.org
http://www.worldaidscampaign.info
http://www.worldaidsday.org

Related Events:
Friday, November 30
Responding to an Exploding Epidemic: HIV/AIDS and STIs in Asia
2 pm in Griffin 3, Williams College Campus
Dr. Xiangsheng Chen will speak about the epidemic of STI and HIV in Asian countries, with an emphasis on its situation in China, and the problems facing medical practicioners in combating it sudden surge. As one of the most authoritative experts and scientists on HIV/STI control in Asia, Chen will discuss his past and ongoing projects – among which include a national syphisllis survelliance program recently published in Lancet, the most influential journal in the field.

Chen is currently a professor and the director of Department of STD Epidemiology in Institute of Dermatology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) and Peking Union Medical College (PUMC). He also serves as consultant in National Center for STD Control, China CDC and WHO Collaboration Center for Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Infections. He has been a member of Executive Committee of the International Union against Sexually Transmitted Infections (IUSTI) since 2005 and Vice-Chairman of Asia-Pacific Committee of the International Union against Sexually Transmitted Infections (IUSTI) since 2002. He has also been working closely with WHO on many international and national projects, and has published influential scientific papers in both national and international journals such as Lancet and Sex Transm Infect.

Saturday, December 1
Gallery Talk with C. Ondine Chavoya, Assistant Professor of Art, Williams College and 2007-08 Clark/Oakley Fellow Jonathan Katz
4:30 pm at the Williams College Museum of Art
Scholars C. Ondine Chavoya and Jonathan Katz will conduct a public conversation about the artistic and sociopolitical background of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s work. 

Saturday, November 1
The Climate of AIDS Activism in the 1980s and Its Implications for Today
7 pm in Griffin 1, Williams College Campus
Following the gallery talk at WCMA, scholar Jonathan Katz will continue the dialogue on art's role in HIV/AIDS activism in the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic. Katz will be touching on organizations such as ACT UP to the creation of newspapers satirizing the hostile condition of AIDS at that time – and how these mechanisms brought the discourse on HIV/AIDS into the public sphere. This event is free and open to the public, and dessert will be served. Brought to you by the Public Health Alliance and the Queer Student Union.

Wednesday, February 20
"Felix Gonzalez-Torres:The Generosity of Meaning"
Lecture by Nancy Spector
4:00 pm at the Williams College Museum of Art
Nancy Spector, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, will lecture on the impact of Gonzalez-Torres’s work.  A world-renowned curator and expert of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Spector organized a major retrospective of the artist in 1995, and most recently served as commissioner for the United States pavilion at the 2007 Venice Bienniale, where she exhibited a broad survey of the artist’s work, including a previously unrealized public sculpture. 

For more information on World AIDS Day events at Williams College, please contact the Chaplin's Office at 413-597-2483.

Williams College Museum of Art
The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.  Contact: Suzanne A. Silitch, Director of Public Relations and External Affairs, 413.597.3178.

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