[AIDS Does Not Discriminate Poster]

Purchase, New York: Community Design Group at SUNY Purchase, 1990. Very good. 37” x 9¾”. Lithograph poster. Very good: a few minor scratches, dings and faint imperfections; verso foxed.

This is a straightforward and powerful poster advertising an AIDS hotline and denoting that AIDS does not discriminate.

We were unable to discover anything about the poster's designer, one “BRIana G. Weiner,” an apparent student at SUNY Purchase, nor the school's “community design group,” though we did confirm the existence of two other safe sex-themed posters published by the group, likely around the same time.

This striking graphic (truncated) reveals a long vertical list of different types of people, printed in yellow on a black background, with the larger pink letters of A – I – D – S incorporated into seven of the words. The bottom portion, in lowercase pink, read “does not discriminate” and listed the phone number for the New York State HIV/AIDS hotline. The poster showed that AIDS could and did affect anyone, from “Uncle,” “Alcoholic,” “Fascist” and “Virgin” to “Republican,” “Feminist,” “Yuppie” or “Student.”

A rare and compelling lithograph print. OCLC shows holdings only at the National Library of Medicine and the UK's Wellcome Collection, though a Google search revealed a possible holding at Yale. (Inventory #: 7653)