Herbert Spiers Papers

Provenance

Donated by Spiers Estate in November 2011.

Scope and Content

The significant majority of the material is dedicated to the Community Research Initiative (CRI) from 1989 and 1990, where Spiers served on the board. This includes meeting minutes, memos, financial statements, press releases, and drug trials. The collection also contains several scientific papers and popular articles on HIV and AIDS, as well as documents related to the Presidential Commission on HIV. This collection would be of interest to a person researching community and government efforts to treat HIV and AIDS in the late 1980s.

History or Bio

Herb Spiers was born on November 8, 1945, in Columbus, Ohio, and graduated from Ohio State University, where he studied philosophy and received an M.A. After graduating from Ohio State, he taught political science at Bishop Watterson High School in Columbus. He then moved to Toronto, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto. In the early 1970s, he joined the burgeoning gay liberation movement in Toronto and was a founding member of Toronto Gay Action, a radical, confrontational group. Spiers was also a founding member of the intellectually provocative gay liberation periodical The Body Politic, for which he wrote reviews and articles. The complete run of The Body Politic is available in the National LGBT History Archive.

In the late 1970s, Spiers moved to New York City, where he had long dreamed of living. In March 1987, after attending a meeting at the LGBT Community Center, Spiers joined others to found ACT UP, the direct action protest group that drew public attention to the illness. Spiers headed the ACT UP Issues Committee that analyzed the organization’s medical and political priorities. He served on the board of the Community Research Initiative (CRI), a group of physicians, activists, and people living with HIV who were frustrated by the slow pace of government and academic AIDS research.

In 1984, Spiers joined S.I. International, an art agency representing European illustrators, mostly from Spain, who painted book covers for mass market paperbacks (gothic romance, historical romance, westerns, sci-fi). After that work dissipated, Spiers started selling original fine art paintings created by the same artists who made the book covers. That business evolved slowly into S.I. Fine Arts, and in the late 1990s or 2000 Spiers became the main U.S. owner of the agency, selling paintings, sculptures, and other art works to galleries.

A longtime survivor of HIV, Spiers died of cancer on March 2, 2011.

Folder List