This research guide contains artwork and biographies for 28 Black artists in the Visual AIDS archive, creating new entry points to our collections and making these artists’ histories more discoverable to researchers.
The guide is available online as a PDF and as a printed booklet, and is organized by the medium in which the corresponding artists practiced most—grouping painters, collagists, illustrators, sculptors, photographers, performers, printmakers, and book artists.
Dominant narratives of the cultural response to AIDS have too often marginalized Black artists, reflecting the same systems of exclusion that have shaped both the art historical record and the epidemic itself. Addressing these gaps requires the intentional recovery and renewed visibility of artists whose work and histories have been overlooked.
The guide is not a comprehensive list of Black artists in our archive, but highlights 28 artists selected based on the extent of their archival collections; particular consideration was also given to artists who have been largely underrecognized and whose histories remain to be written.
With support from the Getty’s Black Visual Arts Archives initiative, Visual AIDS spent the past year updating and enriching biographies for Black artists in our archive and hiring an Archive Fellow to establish contact with and interview these artists and their estates.
We hope the guide will serve as a starting point for researchers to continue this work. We will support some of this research through our 2026–27 Research Fellowship, while also inviting our broader community of researchers, artists, and scholars to use the guide and our archival collections as resources. Anyone interested is encouraged to make a research appointment to visit the archive in Chelsea. Click here to learn how to schedule a research appointment and to take a look at our finding aids.
Black Artists in the Visual AIDS Archive is available in print for the price of shipping on our online shop or free to pick up from our office in Chelsea.
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