AMHERST, Mass.-On Thursday, Dec. 1, at 8 p.m., the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College will mark World AIDS Day with a program of art and song as part of the museum's ongoing Evenings at the Mead series. The evening's program will explore themes of loss and remembrance across the Mead's collection, accentuated by poetry and song, with presentations by the Mead Student Docents and a performance of musical selections by the Amherst College Madrigal Singers. Special attention will be paid to Remorse, Despondence and Acceptance of an Early Death, a large allegorical painting by Graydon Parrish, Class of 1999, on loan to the museum from the Amherst College Library. Nathan Ari Rubinfeld, a student in the Hampshire College Class of 2012 and volunteer in the Mead's American Art Department, will discuss Parrish's painting in the context of artistic responses to the AIDS crisis beginning in the early 1980s.

Regarding the Mead's commemoration of World AIDS Day, Randall Griffey, the museum's curator of American art, remarked, "The Mead strives to highlight art's social and cultural relevance. Parrish's painting, which we're fortunate to have on loan from the Library, is a deeply personal and complex response to the disease and, thus, is an ideal focus of this semester's final Evening at the Mead."

The Mead Art Museum houses the art collection of Amherst College, totaling more than 16,000 works. An accredited member of the American Association of Museums, the Mead participates in Museums10, a regional cultural collaboration. During the academic term, the museum is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to midnight and on Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For a complete schedule of the museum's exhibitions and programs, as well as driving directions and additional information, please visit the museum's website, www.amherst.edu/museums/mead, or call 413/542-2335. 

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