People around the world will observe World AIDS Day today, and Story County is participating by holding the annual A Day Without Art.

The Story County AIDS Coalition is working in conjunction with University Museums at Iowa State, the ISU Student Health Center and Planned Parenthood to put on a program at 7 p.m. in the Brunnier Art Museum, located on the second floor of the Scheman Building.

“The real driving force behind World AIDS Day this year is the Brunnier Museum,” said Pam Carnine, director of the AIDS Coalition. “We’re working with them as kind of a support service for them.”

A Day Without Art was started in New York in 1989 by artists who wanted to make people more aware of AIDS and other related issues, particularly the disease’s impact on the art world, according to a press release.

“The day really is all about awareness of AIDS and the impact it has on us — it really does affect everybody,” said Amy O’Brien, education assistant for University Museums.

She said it also is a day to remember all of the artists who have fallen to AIDS and HIV.

“It has hit the arts community particularly hard,” she said.

To make people on campus and in the Ames community more aware of AIDS and its effect on art, students from the introduction to museums class, Textiles and Clothing 257, will cover up some of the art on campus with black plastic, O’Brien said.

She said four works will be covered this year: the Fountain of the Four Seasons in front of the Memorial Union, “Stride” in front of the Lied Recreation Center, “Forward” in front of the Scheman Building and “Left-Sided Angel” in front of Parks Library.

In the past, works such as “Conversations” in front of Oak and Elm halls, “Forbidden Fruit” in Molecular Biology and “Carem” near the Black Engineering Building have been shrouded, she said.

“When you cover really large works of art like that, it really does get people’s attention,” O’Brien said.

To accompany the missing art, the program, part of the Big Brain Cafe series, will begin at 7 p.m. and focus on A Day Without Art.

O’Brien said Carnine will be leading a panel discussion with people from the Ames community who are HIV positive.

There also will be a “test tube sex” demonstration which will show how “AIDS can spread exponentially,” O’Brien said.

Carnine said a molecular biologist who had been doing AIDS education for the last four years will conduct the demonstration with test tubes, eye droppers and special dyes.

“Exchanging body fluids three times can infect almost the entire group,” Carnine said of the demonstration.

“It doesn’t take a lot of sexual activity on one person’s part to spread the disease,” she said.

During the program, O’Brien said A Day Without Art T-shirts will be given away as prizes, either by drawing or by answering questions about AIDS-related issues.

Carnine said after the program at about 8:15 p.m., a candlelight vigil will be held outside the Scheman Building.

This year’s activities are not as extensive as in years past, she said, but stressed, “We’re still here, we’re still active and we want people to know the infection rate … has not changed.”

She said infections are rising in people older than 50 and also in young people.

“A lot of the people I see have been infected by someone who loved them in the context of a stable relationship,” Carnine said.

“We’re talking to people who have lots of sex partners and to people who are monogamous, but perhaps not with their first monogamous partner,” she said.

World AIDS Day is an international event held every year sponsored by the World Health Organization.

Carnine said this year’s international theme is: “Be a force for change.”

“Each of us has to see ourselves as an agent for change,” she said. “All of us who are concerned about the losses this culture has experienced are going to get together and make some noise.”