Condom Dress with a Best-before Date

Adriana Bertini, the Brazilian artist behind the Dress Up Against AIDS project, has lent elegant condom dresses to the museums HIV/AIDS exhibition. The condoms are made of fragile, natural rubber latex.

- "Natural rubber is extremely sensitive to both heat and light", says museum curator Anna Adrian. "It decomposes quickly, becomes brittle and cracks". Since the exhibition will run for a year or so, we'll have to figure out the best way to protect the dresses. Weve asked the artist to send us condoms of the same type and age as those in the dresses so that we can study the material.