Today, the work is still standing, and \u2014 as of last week \u2014 once more out of sight, hidden behind a fresh layer of sheetrock at 600 East Main Street. The stewards of Wojnarowicz\u2019s legacy, for whom the mural is a literal and symbolic testament to the artist\u2019s enduring resonance, are hopeful that the work can see the light of day again.<\/p>\n
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The mural\u2019s motifs were drawn from Wojnarowicz\u2019s politically charged visual lexicon. (photo by Mindy Best, courtesy the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York)<\/p>\n
The Missing Children Show, organized by the late artist, gallerist, vision care executive, and all-around Renaissance man Potter Coe, opened on December 6, 1985. Compelled in part by the case of 12-year-old Ann Gotlib, who had disappeared from a Louisville mall in broad daylight two years earlier and whose presumed kidnapping<\/a> continued to make local news headlines, Poe was inspired to mount an exhibition in the name of children\u2019s rights. Admission to the show was free, but proceeds from donations encouraged at the door would benefit the Kentucky Child Victims\u2019 Trust Fund.<\/p>\n The six artists invited to participate \u2014 Wojnarowicz, Rich Colicchio, Kiely Jenkins, Judy Glantzman, Rhonda Zwillinger, and Leonard Hilton McGurr, then known by his graffiti moniker Futura 2000 \u2014 were all working in New York at the time, specifically in the East Village. Coe chose the 8,000-square-foot first floor of the empty lithography building as a venue for his show in part because it reminded him<\/a> of the alternative urban structures being repurposed for art in the city, like Wojnarowicz and Mike Bidlo\u2019s collaborative experiments in the decaying piers<\/a> along the Hudson River. In keeping with this spirit, Coe asked the artists to create original works in situ.<\/p>\n Wojnarowicz, who died at the age of 37 from AIDS-related complications, is known for parlaying painting, photography, performance, and protest art into both moving reflections and urgent confrontations of injustice and inequality. He painted the Missing Children mural two years before his HIV diagnosis; before the passing of his mentor and companion Peter Hujar, which thrust Wojnarowicz into an existential reckoning with mortality and meaning; and before he turned to activism to denounce government inaction in the face of the epidemic, showing up to a 1988 ACT UP demonstration wearing a denim jacket emblazoned with an immortal message: \u201cIF I DIE OF AIDS \u2014 FORGET BURIAL \u2014 JUST DROP MY BODY ON THE STEPS OF THE FDA.\u201d It is because of the poignancy of his art and advocacy against AIDS stigma and homophobia that this is what he is often remembered for. But as a wealth of exhibitions, books, essays, and oral histories testify, Wojnarowicz also chronicled the East Village\u2019s underground art scene and played in a punk band (3 Teens Kill 4, named after a New York Post headline); his works addressed loss, love, spirituality, and childhood, as in the iconic \u201cUntitled (One Day This Kid)<\/a>\u201d (1990\u201391), a black-and-white portrait of the young artist as a boy surrounded by a scathing written rebuke of systemic homophobia in America.<\/p>\n Wendy Olsoff, who co-founded PPOW in the early days of the East Village gallery boom in 1983, told Hyperallergic that the themes of the Missing Children exhibition would have resonated with Wojnarowicz\u2019s own life experience. <\/p>\n \u201cI think it must have been close to his heart, because trauma and abuse in childhood were something he knew intimately,\u201d Olsoff said. The artist escaped from a violent home in New Jersey and was unhoused as a teenager, and many of his works center on shattering traditional domestic ideals. In 1985, the same year he participated in Coe\u2019s show, he collaborated with Richard Kern on the 11-minute short film You Killed Me First<\/a>, in which Wojnarowicz portrays a character based on his own alcoholic father. The piece was later shown at Manhattan\u2019s Ground Zero Gallery in an installation featuring a family dinner scene with bloodied skeletons seated around the table.<\/p>\n For Missing Children, Wojnarowicz similarly set up props around the murals, including a baby doll, a children\u2019s baseball jacket, and a skeleton hanging above a black chair, in what an article in the Louisville Courier Journal described as a \u201cmacabre representation of child-snatching.\u201d More accurately, this motley tableau reflected the artist\u2019s approach of distilling personal trauma into a distinct iconography. The mural depicted motifs that recurred throughout his oeuvre, like the burning house, a symbol of defiance that critic Lucy Lippard called<\/a> \u201chis first artistic trademark,\u201d and the gagging cow, which he rendered on Pier 34 and even on the Berlin Wall. They were ways of lending shape to buried memories, perhaps, or lending agency to those who are voiceless. \u201cDavid was an artist of incredible integrity,\u201d Glantzman said in an interview with Hyperallergic<\/a> in 2019. \u201cHe was somebody who had no choice but to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n It was implicit that the works in the Missing Children exhibition would be ephemeral, made to be on view for the show\u2019s five-day run, and for the most part that was the case. Except for Wojnarowicz\u2019s. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t use the word \u2018miracle\u2019 lightly,\u201d Anita Vitale, board chair of the Wojnarowicz Foundation, said in a phone call. \u201cBut it really wasn\u2019t meant to last. It was in an old abandoned warehouse, and who knew what would happen to that?\u201d<\/p>\n She was connected to Putney \u2014 whom she calls the mural\u2019s \u201cgodfather\u201d \u2014 after he got in touch with Glantzman, a friend of Wojnarowicz\u2019s whose work was also in the Missing Children Show (the pair became closer in Louisville, while they drove around together in a borrowed 1950 Chevy, according to Carr\u2019s biography<\/a>). In May 2023, Vitale visited the site along with Glantzman and Isaac Alpert, PPOW\u2019s director of estates. Vitale said she sensed from the start that Zyyo, the developer, viewed the paintings on the wall of its to-be fitness center more as an inconvenience than as a scintillating art historical revelation. The mural was made on a load-bearing structural wall; removing it entirely was out of the question.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018We wish you could take them away.\u2019 I mean, I also wished I could take them away, but they\u2019re painted directly on the brick wall,\u201d Vitale said. \u201cThere was no way that in this landmarked building we could start removing brick by brick.\u201d<\/p>\n Other options were floated: encasing the mural in plexiglass, or installing a railing, and providing limited public access to the site for a few days a year. The Speed Museum, a few miles south, found a photographer to document the work and helped research contractors, Vitale said. During this period, she noted, Zyyo maintained contact and approved a site visit for a contractor plexi case assessment. But these were like \u201clittle crumbs,\u201d Vitale continued. \u201cIt was clear that they did not want the public coming in to view these murals.\u201d Ultimately, the company decided to put the drywall back up, with a six-inch air gap so that the work is not flush with the wall \u2014 untouched, yet unseen. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was an interesting display of what happens when you have developers on one side and a foundation on the other,\u201d Alpert told Hyperallergic. \u201cTo me, I was like, \u2018Oh my God, why wouldn\u2019t everyone be doing back flips [to show the mural]?\u2019 But it\u2019s a reminder of what it means to preserve someone\u2019s legacy and educate people about what that entails.\u201d<\/p>\n In a call with Hyperallergic, Jamie Campisano, chief creative director at Zyyo, said the company was \u201cbetween a rock and a hard place.\u201d The property is privately owned, she emphasized, so the gym operator leasing the space, Zero-Sum<\/a>, would have to provide public access. Having the mural exposed, Campisano added, would also interfere with the vision for a \u201ccardio room,\u201d which includes mirrors, treadmills, and TV screens. (Hyperallergic attempted to reach Zero-Sum for comment.) There are no alternative sites for the fitness center on the property, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to respect our tenants that are leasing the space, and what they would like the space to be, but we also want to respect the foundation\u2019s wishes of protecting the mural, which is what we did,\u201d Campisano said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe understand that we are obligated to protect it, and we want to have it protected,\u201d she continued. \u201cWe care about the foundation. But we know that we are not under any obligation to display [the work].\u201d<\/p>\n In 1990, the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) established legal protections to prevent artworks from being altered, damaged, or destroyed. Under certain conditions, art created before 1990 may also qualify for these safeguards. But VARA does not necessarily stipulate that a work must be publicly displayed. In one known case, Samuel Kerson sued Vermont Law School<\/a> after it installed acoustic panels to conceal his two 8-by-24-foot murals about the history of slavery, which visitors found offensive for their inclusion of stereotypical racist depictions. Kerson argued that the school had violated his VARA rights by modifying the presentation of the works. In part because the school\u2019s decision to cover the artworks \u201cneither modifies nor destroys them,\u201d however, the court ruled in favor of the Vermont institution.<\/p>\n With regard to the work\u2019s material preservation, Olsoff said she is unsure whether the current covering on Wojnarowicz\u2019s mural would protect it from damage, such as from leaks or mold. (Hyperallergic emailed Zyyo to ask whether the company conducted a conservation assessment before concealing the work.) But she also thinks of the decision not to display the work as a broader question of ethics, of accountability to a past at risk of erasure, values that often run counter to commercial interests.<\/p>\n \u201cThe impetus for them is to have a functioning gym and a building that\u2019s economically profitable for them,\u201d Olsoff said. \u201cOf course, this mural is not conducive to working out, looking at dead meat or a screaming cow \u2014 I\u2019d like to work out while looking at David\u2019s mural, but I don\u2019t think the average person would find it inspiring to jog to.\u201d<\/p>\n Zyyo claimed that it was not aware of the mural when it purchased the property, and both Olsoff and Vidale said they recognized the unanticipated weight of such a discovery. But faced with the knowledge of the work\u2019s existence, the company was confronted with a decision, and, in Olsoff\u2019s words, \u201ca responsibility.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think these people are censoring him, but they\u2019re definitely silencing him,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1983_Untitled_Photo-Andreas-Sterzing-1200x923.jpeg\")
David Wojnarowicz at Gracie Mansion Gallery in the East Village in 1983 (\u00a9 Andreas Sterzing; courtesy the artist; the Estate of David Wojnarowicz; and PPOW, New York)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1983_The-Boys-Go-Off-to-War_48-x-96-inches-2-1200x631.jpg\")
David Wojnarowicz, \u201cThe Boys Go Off to War\u201d (1983), acrylic on Masonite\u00a0(\u00a9 The Estate of David Wojnarowicz; courtesy the Estate and PPOW, New York)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Slide009.jpg\")
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\nPhotos from the Missing Children exhibition show Wojnarowicz\u2019s installation, which a newspaper called \u201cmacabre.\u201d (\u00a9 The Estate of David Wojnarowicz; courtesy the Estate, PPOW, and Fales Library at New York University)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/049_DavidWojnarowicz_PPOW_Mindy_Best-1-1200x800.jpg\")
David Wojnarowicz Mural from 1985 at 600 East Main Street, Louisville, KY<\/p>\n