Panel Discussion 'Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald'
View Recording
ABOUT THE PANEL
This panel for Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald brought together the exhibition’s curator, Kyle Croft (Executive Director, Visual AIDS), Chloe Hayward (former Director of Education, Studio Museum in Harlem), and Katherine Cheairs (Artist and Visual AIDS Board Member).
The conversation explored key themes from the Ministry catalogue, including the therapeutic possibilities of art, creative practices that thrive outside the traditional art market, and the role of churches and visual culture in the history of Black AIDS activism.
Published by Visual AIDS in collaboration with The Bronx Museum, the Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald catalogue is the first book dedicated to McDonald’s sculptural practice and features essays by Croft and Dr. Jareh Das, alongside a conversation between McDonald and fellow artist Rafael Sánchez. The catalogue is available to purchase for $35 in The Bronx Museum’s gift shop.
About the Panelists
Katherine “Kat” Cheairs, MFA
Katherine “Kat” Cheairs, MFA is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, researcher, and videomaker whose work concerns the Diasporic Black Body, memory, HIV & AIDS art and activism, quantum physics, archives, liminality, and embodiment. Kat is the producer and director of 'Voices at the Gate for Day With(out) Art 2021: Enduring Care' and 'Ending Silence, Shame, and Stigma: HIV/AIDS in the African American Family' (2012).
Kyle Croft
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.
Chloe Hayward
Chloe Hayward is an educator, cultural producer, and art therapist based in New York. She is currently a graduate professor in the Creative Arts Therapy Department at the School of Visual Arts and Syracuse University and was formerly the Director of Education at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her work exists at the intersection of art therapy and art education and applies the power of the creative arts process to heal, bring awareness and promote social change, equity, and liberation.
About Reverend Joyce McDonald
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.
