During the summer of 2020, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, the documentary director Matt Nadel was back home in Boca Raton, Florida. He remembers one particular evening walk that he took with his father, Phil, as they weathered out those early months. As they strode through the neighborhood, Nadel, now 26, said that the prospect of a vaccine was exciting, but the idea of pharmaceutical executives profiting off a devastating virus left him feeling uneasy.
Before they become historical documents, diaries start out as ordinary ledgers, a frame-by-frame accounting of the moments and events of a person's days. With the help of time, scholarship, and critical interest, they become history in miniature, an up-close look at how a life was formed and shaped by the times the diarist lived in. One could read Randy Shilts's monumental 1987 history And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic to learn about the infuriating and chaotic early history of the crisis:
The goal for Downtown/Uptown is quite simple: to showcase the decade's best art for new generations. I was thinking about what art was pivotal to the moment, said Brett Gorvy, show co-curator. And also what over time has become pivotal. We've been lucky to be able to access the greatest paintings of so many of these artists. According to Gorvy, the 80s were typified by the central role of celebrity in the art world,
