Gerald Anthony White 1970-2005

Gerald White was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1970.

He received a BA in English from Marquette University in 1992; in 1995, he earned a second BA, this, in Art, from DePaul University. Subsequently, he took additional coursework at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Northwestern University, and the Seattle Central Community College.

Gerald worked as the Customer Service Coordinator and Assistant to the Vice President of DK Systems, Inc., Chicago, a software distribution and training business, from 1995-6. From that time until 1999, he was employed by the University of Washington, including in the capacity of Computing and Communications in the Office of the Vice President. Gerald received two ‘Keep the Dream Alive’ excellence awards -- one for ‘Visionary Leader’ and the other for ‘Doing Whatever it Takes,’ from the Starbucks Coffee Company, Seattle, where he worked as a Property Management Coordinator and Store Development Archivist from 2000-04. During the same period, he was an Administrative Assistant for the SeattleInsider.com, a city guide website for Seattle, to which he contributed written content and photographs.

As a student applying to graduate programs in art history, Gerald participated in ‘Project 1000: Moving towards 5,000 Additional Underrepresented Graduate Students.’ Affiliated with the Coalition to Increase Minority Degrees, Project 1000 is a national program created to assist underrepresented students applying to graduate school. As part of his application, Gerald wrote, ‘My decision to pursue the second bachelors degree at DePaul University is an example of a moment where I decided to overcome past deficiencies. At the University of Minnesota and Marquette I struggled with the curriculum, but I knew that I was capable of a lot more. I was able to focus and devote more energy to my goals, and the result is a steady progression…’

Gerald began the MA art history program history at UNT during the spring semester 2004. In the ‘Statement of Interest’ portion of his application for our program, Gerald recalled, ‘My interest in Art is one that has been developing steadily ever since my freshman year of high school. The school’s curriculum had a broad Humanities emphasis, and this allowed me to take as many art classes as I wanted in my four years there. As a result, I was exposed to photography, drawing, painting, sculpture and even architecture at a very early age. I also had the benefit of several encouraging family members, who explained the historical context of the media as well as how to use it. Artists’ works were presented to us in class and in field trips as products of not just the imagination, but of the “time” in which they were created.’

Gerald noted that while studying studio art at DePaul University, ‘beyond realizing my own creative ability, I was fascinated to see the connection between what I had learned in my previous undergraduate coursework and the production of Art throughout history. I began to think of logical progressions for my career after graduating and…ways to combine my broad learning experiences and growing interests.’ He continued, ‘My research interests lie in 19th and 20th century painting, Popular Culture imagery, and Contemporary Western Art. Some areas include 20th century album cover art, modernist architecture, physique magazine photography of the 50s and 60s, and works produced in times of “Suffering” (For example, works produced in response to the early years of the AIDS epidemic.) I am also interested in imagery of “race” in Western art and questions related to arts administration such as “Who, historically, has had access to the arts and why”? ’

At the School of Visual Arts, Gerald was a highly valued Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant for Art Appreciation and the art history surveys. To reward his strong academic performance in the program, the art history faculty unanimously selected him as the art history scholarship recipient in 2004-2005.

During his MA art history colloquium in April 2005, Gerald presented his thesis project, ‘Undetectable Others: Ideology and Identity in Safe-Sex Posters, 1983-1991,’ to an interdisciplinary committee consisting of Dr. Kelly Donahue-Wallace, SoVA Art History; Dr. Jacqueline Foertsch, UNT Department of English; Annette Lawrence, SoVA Studio; and Dr. Jennifer Way, SoVA Art History. In the prospectus for his thesis, Gerald explained, ‘My thesis will analyze safe sex posters from roughly 1981 to 1995 to describe ideologies at work and to understand and evaluate how representational choices generate and perpetuate social myths. In an increasingly visual culture, images are produced and in turn help construct social reality. However, safe sex posters created additional “truths” that reinforced exclusions of minority gay men from representation as an unproblematic standard. My research focuses on these years for two reasons. First, HIV prevention and educational policies were not fully informed by mainstream health organizations. Prevention efforts within the gay community predated public health campaigns by about five to six years (Scott 1997; Watney 1997). 

These campaigns offer an opportunity to examine how gay health organizations “pictured” the AIDS epidemic in a ten year period. I also focus on these years because noticeable shifts in representation occur during this time period. Visual types in safe sex posters expand to include minority bodies around 1991.However, posters from 1983 to 1990 were the first images available to gay men specifically addressing their health needs.

Absences of minority bodies in these early safe sex posters implied that HIV prevention was only a concern of gay white men. Thus, at a crucial emergent point in the AIDS epidemic, safe sex posters circulated misinformation as a cultural norm within gay communities. Routinely featuring white males as beneficiaries of safe sex messages ignored minority gay men’s health with regard to HIV. In addition, imagery within these materials reinforced stereotypes equating gayness with whiteness. I will take as my primary argument that these oversights in representation produced harmful repercussions for minority gay men.’

The strength of Gerald’s research already had been recognized professionally during December 2004, when he presented his paper, ‘The Marginalization of Minority Gay Men in AIDS Imagery: Living on the Periphery of the “Unhealthy Other”,’ at the international, interdisciplinary ‘AIDS in Culture’ conference organized in cooperation with CENCIDA, the national Mexican AIDS organization and held in Mexico City. In support of his participation, Gerald was award travel funding from the Toulouse Graduate School.

During the fall semester 2005, Gerald was invited to join the UNT chapter of the National Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, which recognizes and encourages scholarship in all academic disciplines. He was one of three graduate students asked to speak at the President’s Council Fall Event held September 1st at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Gerald’s enthusiasm for art history, his warm personality, and his wonderful sense of humor gained him the friendship of students and faculty alike. We will miss Gerald terribly.

'Jennifer Way, Associate Professor, Art History.