The Art of AIDS Education was an exhibition of posters held at the University of Rochester’s Hartnett Gallery. By presenting public health posters as visual art, it validated the graphic strategies of activists, designers, and public health workers. It emphasized that images could save lives and that design—especially when created by or for marginalized communities—was central to that effort. The poster’s minimalist layout, stark lighting, and bold typography echo the aesthetic of public health materials while simultaneously calling out toxic masculinity. In doing so, it honors activist design movements like Visual AIDS and GMHC that turned everyday communications into instruments of resistance and survival. The use of a Black male subject aligns with a broader set of visual interventions by Black artists, designers, and activists who challenged their exclusion from early AIDS narratives and framed protection, intimacy, and accountability as shared responsibilities within their own communities.