"If there’s less stigma [around dementia] and people get diagnosed earlier, there could be a movement. So, we need to look to AIDS and HIV, to ACT UP, for the ways they increased visibility that led to something larger."

- Sara Langer, MD, collaborator and former neurologist living with Lewy body dementia

Join us for the opening reception of Past Advocacy, Future Change: HIV/AIDS Campaigns Transforming Dementia Narratives, an exhibition by 2025 UCSF Library Artist in Residence Michelle Memran. Opening during the convergence of World Alzheimer’s Month and Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) Awareness Month, this exhibition invites visitors to consider how lessons from one movement can help reframe another.

The opening reception will take place on the main floor of the UCSF Kalmanovitz Library on the Parnassus Heights campus and will include an introduction to the exhibition, a conversation with the artist, and special guests. 

Past Advocacy, Future Change explores how the bold visual language and community-led messaging of early HIV/AIDS activism can inspire more humanizing, solutions-oriented narratives around Alzheimer's disease and related dementias today. Drawing on archival HIV/AIDS posters, flyers, and activist graphics, the exhibition reimagines these materials within the contemporary dementia landscape. Striking black-and-white imagery is punctuated by selective use of color, serving as a visual metaphor for the gaps, silences, and oversimplified narratives that continue to shape public understanding of changing cognitive abilities. Visitors can also explore a glossary of dementia-related terms and interactive 3D brain visualizations, offering additional context that bridges the science of dementia with its human experience.

The exhibition opening is available to UCSF ID badge holders, and admission is FREE. 

UCSF welcomes all participants to our events. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this event because of a disability, please contact Dylan Romero at dylan.romero@ucsf.edu as soon as possible.

Questions?

Email dylan.romero@ucsf.edu if you have questions about this event.

Image source: This is the Way Many People Deal with HIV poster, AIDS History Project – Ephemera, MSS 2000-31, box 7, folder 3, item 18. UCSF Archives and Special Collections.