Panel Discussion MISSING: When East Village Artists Came to Main Street
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Please join the Hite Institute of Art + Design for a panel discussion celebrating Louisville's unlikely role in New York's legendary 1980s East Village avant-garde art scene.
In December 1985, five New York artists traveled to Louisville to stage a show in a vacant building at 600 East Main Street. Mounted as a fundraiser for Kentucky’s Child Victims’ Trust Fund, the 1985 Missing Children Show featured new work by David Wojnarowicz, Judy Glantzman, Rich Colicchio, Kiely Jenkins, and Futura 2000. A mural by Wojnarowicz loomed large in the makeshift exhibition space. Today, it is the only known surviving mural by Wojnarowicz, who died of AIDS in 1992 “due to government neglect.” The mural should be a point of pride for our city. But in August of 2025 the building's current owner covered the mural again with drywall painted black evoking the sadly familiar violence of censorship and erasure that continues to haunt Wojnarowicz’s work long after his death.
Anita Vitale, chair of the David Wojnarowicz Foundation, will join celebrated East Village artists Rich Colicchio and Judy Glantzman to discuss their memories of New York's East Village scene, the importance of their 1985 trip to Louisville, and the vital urgency of restoring Wojanrowciz's murals to public view.