World AIDS Day

The New York City AIDS Memorial, Jenny Holzer, Times Square Arts, and Housing Works bring a day of collective remembrance, art, and performance to Times Square, marking the 10th anniversary of the New York City AIDS Memorial.

The day begins at noon with a press conference and the start of an hours-long public Reading of the Names of New Yorkers Lost to AIDS. Presented for the fourth year with Housing Works, this moving experience honors the thousands of New Yorkers lost to the epidemic, reminding us that every name represents a person, a story, and a community forever changed. Volunteer readers include artists, activists, leaders from citywide AIDS service organizations––including Callen-Lorde, Visual AIDS, PrEP4All, the Save HIV Funding Campaign, and Planned Parenthood of Greater New York/Project Street Beat––and elected officials including Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, New York State Senator Erik Bottcher, New York State Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, and New York City Council Member Carl Wilson. 

Beginning at 5:00 PM, Jenny Holzer’s artworks will appear on mobile LED trucks in Times Square, displaying texts on love, loss, and anger from artists, writers, and poets such as Cookie Mueller, David Wojnarowicz, Robert Glück, Hervé Guibert, Ricardo Hernandez, Eileen Myles, Stephen Andrews, Emily Dickinson, CAConrad, Derek Jarman, and Noël Coward.

From 6:00 to 7:00 PM, Tony, Olivier, Emmy, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award-winning director and choreographer Rob Ashford will direct We Remember, a major public performance featuring a choir of Broadway performers. Acclaimed actor and director Tony Goldwyn will co-host this special moment with multi-hyphenate performer Julianne Hough, featuring music and words that celebrate the lives, creativity, and contributions of those we have lost.

Extending World AIDS Day programming into the night, Jenny Holzer will unveil I REMEMBER Joe Brainard as part of Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment series, the world's largest and longest-running digital public art program. From 11:57 PM to 12:00 AM, and continuing nightly throughout December, over 100 digital displays spanning 41st to 49th Streets will be programmed with animations featuring selections from I Remember by artist and poet Joe Brainard. I Remember (1970) charts memory with honest, humorous, and observant declarations of life. Deeply personal and relatable, Brainard’s work honors one person of the 120,000 and proves that attached to every name of an individual lost to AIDS is a memory of both an extraordinary and an ordinary life lived. Brainard, who died in 1994, contributed a celebrated legacy as a member of the New York LGBTQ+ and artist community.