Portraits and Memory: Graduate Student Curates John Burton Harter Exhibit on Love, Loss and the AIDS Crisis

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences  

Gray Koesters’ curation of a special exhibit featuring the work of artist John Burton Harter remembers the friends, faces, and unrequited love lost in the tragedy of the AIDS crisis.  

Titled, “I can only tell you I miss you in paint now,” the exhibit features portraits and paintings of the people Harter loved and lost throughout his life. It will run in conjunction with the Theatre Arts Department production of The Laramie Project in the Thrust Theatre, opening April 10.  

Supported by the John Burton Harter Foundation, Koesters had the chance to curate this exhibit independently, something they are doing for the first time. Koesters graduated in the spring of 2025 with a degree in art history and a minor in women’s, gender and sexuality studies. They are now in their last semester as a graduate student in the Critical and Curatorial Studies program.  

“I was really intrigued during my first visit to the archive as I'd never really interacted with Harter’s work prior to this,” Koesters said. "I came across portraits that he created that were part of an AIDS Memorial project. There are lots of portraits of friends and family who had died of AIDS. I've picked out six or so of those portraits, and then I have also picked out a few larger paintings that are not related to the AIDS wall, but feature some of the same friends that are featured in the portraits.”  

Koesters said this exhibit is a remembrance and celebration of life of a generation of queer people lost during the 1980s to the AIDS crisis.  

“Harter kept a lot of journal entries, and there was one I came across which was provided by Lisa Rolfe, the Harter Foundation's registrar, where he talks about a painting of a man named Cliff Howard, Jr., and I have paintings of him featured in this show,” Koesters said. “Harter was kind of in unrequited love with Cliff most of his life. And then later on, Cliff had AIDS and later died of AIDS. One of the journal entries I found is just talking about the process of loving him, of painting him, of losing him.”  

And that’s where Koesters discovered the name of the show.   

“The journal entry ends with, ‘I'm sorry, Cliff, I can only tell you I miss you in paint now.’ And as soon as I read that, I was like, ‘That's it,’” they said.  

Hite Institute of Art + Design Professors Chris Reitz and Jennifer Sichel have offered Koesters their guidance throughout the process, as this exhibit goes hand in hand with another John Burton Harter Foundation-supported exhibit, MISSING, taking place now at the Cressman Center.  

“This is great real-world experience,” Koesters said of the detailed curation process. “I'm going to the archive, I am fully immersing myself in this work, and I am getting loan agreements figured out for these pieces. I need to make sure I have an exact layout and need to measure everything. And I need to think about lighting and security hardware.”  

These are all things they’ve done with class support in the past, but now with experience doing it on their own.  

Koesters said they are grateful for the support of the John Burton Harter Foundation for making this exhibit possible.  

“I'm excited to show Harter’s work. I don't think many people on campus will have seen it before, and so just to get more visibility for him also because he was a student at UofL; he got a degree in art here before moving elsewhere.”  

Koester looks forward to honoring those lost by curating and facilitating the exhibit.  

“Going back to the main theme of remembrance, I often think a lot about the work and artists and people that were around during the AIDS crisis and how that time is not so far off in the past,” Koesters said. “We lost a whole generation of queer folks essentially. Anytime I have a chance to bring that back into focus for folks, I think is really important.” 

Created in response to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming, The Laramie Project stands as one of the most significant works of documentary theatre addressing anti-LGBTQ+ violence in the United States. Click here to purchase tickets to attend the production and to view the exhibit.