Family Day November 2025: Sculpture-Making With Reverend Joyce McDonald
Saturday, November 15
1:00 – 4:00 PM—Artmaking!
2:00 PM—Story Time!
Free! For All Ages
Optional RSVP*
Drop-Ins Welcome
About the Program
Don’t miss this opportunity to meet and make art with the artist Reverend Joyce McDonald, whose work is currently on view at the Museum in the exhibition Ministry! For this program, McDonald will lead a sculpture activity using Model Magic clay—a material accessible to all ages and skill levels.
The program features additional art-making activities led by Bronx Museum Educators, as well as a Story Time at 2:00 PM featuring artist Faith Ringgold’s beloved children’s book, Tar Beach.
Family Day is part of the Museum’s Family Programs, which are designed to be fun for all ages and accessible to young children and their caregivers.
If you plan on attending, please consider letting us know with an optional RSVP. Questions? Please email education@bronxmuseum.org
*Groups of any size, organized privately or through a school, community center, or other entity, must register through our Group Tours form at least one week in advance of their visit. Due to capacity limitations, groups are not engaged through this program. Thank you for understanding.
Image: Reverend Joyce McDonald and friends with the Ministry catalogue at The Bronx Museum. Photo by Argenis Apolinario, 2025.
About Reverend Joyce McDonald
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 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 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.
