SAN FRANCISCO — The Center for Sex & Culture (CSC) has launched its first-ever Kickstarter campaign to raise money to publish an exhibition catalog of some of the most notable safer sex/AIDs posters from the 80s and 90s.
The collection was donated last year to CSC by Buzz Benson, a graphic artist who co-founded the safer sex club, Eros, and worked with CSC founders Drs. Robert Morgan Lawrence and Carol Queen on the Coalition for Healthy Sex.
The Buzz Benson catalog will accompany the CSC’s live exhibition of around 100 of the posters that will begin Nov. 7 and run through Jan. 31. It will contain reproduced images from Benson's collection, primarily posters, including safer sex campaigns from North America, Europe and Oceania, as well as an art historical essay by Alex Fialho, an interview with Benson and a foreword by CSC director Dr. Queen.
Benson says in the Kickstarter campaign video: “Posters are something tangible, like we now have in our hands, from 1986, 1987, 1988, and they convey a particular message of the time. Sometimes they do it with whimsy, sometimes they do it with striking fear, sometimes delivering information, but these posters were distributed all around the community in order to spread the message to the entire community of awareness, sexual safety and growth.”
The campaign runs until Nov. 5 and has already amassed more than half of its $7,000 goal. Those who pledge can earn relevant rewards, including copies of the catalog, tickets to CatalystCon and a guided tour of CSC.
"One of the things that’s so important, and makes me so excited that these images will be put into a book, is that many people think they know what the AIDS era was like, but the fact is that there are many details that are being lost to memory,” Queen said, adding that to build a future, we need accurate conceptions of the past.
For more information about the campaign, and a visual tour of some of the posters, visit the CSC’s Kickstarter page here.
CSC hosts educational and cultural events, maintains a sexuality library, archive and gallery and supports sex-related research projects. It is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. For further details, email carol@sexandculture.org.
