The large sculpture outside the front entrance is wrapped in black plastic, as if someone had thrown it out in a garbage bag. Directly inside, two statues are covered with black sheets. These, too, look as if they've been disposed of, perhaps shrouded for basement storage. Previous visitors to the museum may have trouble recalling just what the sculptures look like under the cloth. The open apse, where colorful abstract paintings hang on the curved walls, is reduced to austerity.
Cloths cover all the paintings.
The video holds the exhibit together, its haunting music drifting through the museum, its narration making themes of loss and death explicit. Aside from its obvious goals of educating the public about AIDS and reckoning the toll it's taken, the exhibit has a strong moral undercurrent. When you're unable to recall the precise details of artworks you've seen again and again, you're forced to wonder how closely you were paying attention in the first place. In this way, the Day Without Art is about its nominal topic only as much as it is about all of us.