Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald

Visual AIDS is pleased to partner with the Bronx Museum to present Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald, the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist's work.

Through sculpture, Reverend Joyce McDonald crafts moving testimonies to themes that have shaped her life: hope, grace, and serenity, but also hardship, loss, and devotion. Her work often depicts figures in repose or embrace, embodying the strength, support, and unconditional love that has sustained her life.

A longtime Visual AIDS Artist Member, McDonald began working with clay in 1997 through an art therapy program, shortly after her diagnosis with HIV. She quickly recognized the medium’s potential for healing and transformation. Working intuitively, she allows figures to emerge from the clay, giving form to memories and emotion while processing experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and illness.

An ordained minister, spirituality and service are integral to McDonald’s life and work. She understands her art as an extension of her ministry, a channel for divinity, compassion, and healing. A self-described testimonial artist, McDonald is open about sharing her own story—“from the shooting gallery to the art gallery”—through her artwork to inspire confidence and dignity in others.

Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald is the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s work, bringing together her early sculptures in air-dry clay and found materials with recent glazed ceramics. Inspired by McDonald's history of repurposing stairs and furniture into display surfaces, her sculptures are presented on stepped pedestals designed by Le Xie (rooom). Archival materials provide a nuance a nuanced portrait of McDonald's biography, tracing her upbringing in Brooklyn's Farragut houses as well as her decades of exhibiting art as an artist member of Visual AIDS. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated 112-page catalogue published by Visual AIDS, in collaboration with the Bronx Museum. The catalogue features essays by Croft and Dr. Jareh Das, alongside a conversation between McDonald and fellow artist Rafael Sánchez. It is available to pre-order for $35 through the Visual AIDS store.

Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald is curated by Kyle Croft, Executive Director of Visual AIDS.

Reverend Joyce McDonald was born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York, where she continues to live and work. As a teenager, she performed at the Apollo Theater in the girl group The Primettes. After her HIV diagnosis in 1985, 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 as an activist and advocate includes founding an HIV awareness and creative arts group for young girls and teens, working with women in shelters and hospitals, writing letters to incarcerated women, coordinating her church's AIDS ministry, and serving as assistant director of its children's choir. McDonald is the proud mother of two daughters and has two sons-in-law, eleven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

McDonald has presented solo exhibitions at Gordon Robichaux, New York, in 2024 and 2021, and at Maureen Paley, London, in 2023, which was profiled in The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, and Artforum. Her work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; and the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.