The New Social Environment | Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald

Kyle Croft is the executive director of Visual AIDS where he works to preserve the legacies of artists lost to AIDS and support a global community of artists living with HIV. He has edited volumes on Darrel Ellis, Frederick Weston, and William Olander, and holds an MA in art history from Hunter College.

Reverend Joyce McDonald (b. 1951, Brooklyn, NY) lives and works in Brooklyn. As a teenager, she performed at the Apollo Theater in the girl group The Primettes. After her HIV diagnosis in 1995 and a long battle with addiction, McDonald was ordained as a minister at the Church of the Open Door in 2009. A lifelong creative, McDonald was introduced to sculpture in the late 1990s through an art therapy program at the Jewish Board of Family Services. She was soon connected to Visual AIDS, where she has become a core member of a community of artists living with HIV. McDonald has exhibited her work extensively with Visual AIDS, the Jewish Board, and her church for more than twenty years. Her work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum; the Brooklyn Museum; and the Hessel Museum of Art.

Antonio Sergio Bessa has organized several exhibitions including Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (in collaboration with Yasmin Ramirez), Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect (in collaboration with Jessamyn Fiore), and The Life and Times of Alvin Baltrop. His essays on concrete poetry have been published in several anthologies, journals, and websites, and he is the author of Öyvind Fahlström: The Art of Writing, and editor of Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos (in collaboration with Odile Cisneros), and of Mary Ellen Solt: Toward a Theory of Concrete Poetry.