Limited edition t-shirt featuring materials from the archive of Richard Berkowitz. Produced on the occasion of our exhibition Love Rules: The Harm Reduction Archives of Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz at MoMA PS1, on view through October 6, 2025. Designed and printed by Come on Strong.
In 1982, New York-based writer and activist Richard Berkowitz was doing sex work to pay for grad school, until he was diagnosed with early symptoms of AIDS. Terrified, Berkowitz stopped having sex, and disconnected his phones to cut himself off from the world. That was until a former client reached out seeking connection through masturbatory sex acts. This prompted a realization for Richard that there could be ways to have sex safely. In collaboration with his physician, virologist Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, Berkowitz and his friend, activist Michael Callen, self-published How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach (1983). Their 40-page booklet is considered to have established safe sex guidelines, a set of sexual practices that continues to keep Berkowitz and millions of others around the world alive and well.
Love Rules features materials from the archives of writers and activists Heather Edney and Richard Berkowitz—photography, DIY publications, and other ephemera—detailing the creation of safe sex guidelines and safer injection practices. Centering the expertise of sex workers and drug users, the presentation highlights how harm reduction strategies used by social services today are informed by the work of those most directly impacted by the AIDS epidemic and drug-related overdoses.
