iWellcome Collection · Euston
A display exploring HIV and AIDS through stories of protest and care, from the UK's 1980s-90s epidemic to global activism today, via photography, film and archives.
Among the photographs is a 1989 picket outside Wellcome plc's shareholders' meeting. The company made AZT, then one of the only HIV drugs, and ACT UP London's first protest was against its price. A co-founder bought shares just to get inside and question the chairman. Wellcome later lowered the price.
The display fills Gallery 3 on level 1. Gordon Rainsford's black-and-white shots of die-ins in Trafalgar Square sit alongside Gideon Mendel's 1993 photographs from Middlesex Hospital's AIDS wards, a 15-minute film about The Landmark centre in south London, and five stories from Through Positive Eyes, from Johannesburg to Port-au-Prince, with new 2026 reflections on aid cuts. Before you leave, you can make your own placard at a table set up for it.
Socialist Worker called the photographs "intensely moving"; Queerguru found the display "simple and clear-cut". A content note covers death, homophobia and a case holding a human umbilical cord. It's free and runs until 30 May 2027.
ACT UP versus Wellcome
Look for the pickets at Wellcome plc's 1989 and 1991 shareholder meetings, shown beside the company's own Retrovir (AZT) packaging and an 'AZT on trial' flyer.
John on the ward
Mendel's 1993 photograph shows John lying on a Middlesex Hospital bed chatting with his partner; the ward sister recalls her own sister being shocked by it in 1993.
Angelina Namiba's Memory Store
The box she filled for her daughter after a 1992 diagnosis, when she was given six months to live: a framed handprint, first trainers and ballet shoes.
Chained to Westminster Bridge
Rainsford's World AIDS Day 1989 photograph of protesters chained to the bridge, near a colour shot of ACT UP's 2025 vigil in Trafalgar Square.
The placard table
A making space where you write your own placard and add it to the display's message of protest.
You'd rather avoid human tissue and photos of men who died soon after: there's a content note.
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