About Visual AIDS

Board of Directors
Geoffrey Hendricks, President
Pavel Zoubok, Vice President
Joseph P. Tuohy, Treasurer
Sur Rodney (Sur), Secretary
Barton Lidice Benes
Brice Brown
Ron Hernandez
Cathleen Koo
Josh Pushkin
Joe Sheftel, Esq.

Staff
Amy Sadao, Executive Director
Nelson Santos, Associate Director

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As the only arts organization of its kind, Visual AIDS is a resource for art programming promoting AIDS awareness and HIV-prevention. While art projects evolve annually, they are all based in the knowledge that visual art offers opportunities to discuss the AIDS pandemic and its attendant issues. Documenting HIV-positive artists' work in the Frank Moore Archive Project, Visual AIDS preserves their place in history and reveals the impact of AIDS on contemporary art.

Utilizing Contemporary Art

Each year we have produced and distributed 20,000, new, free, AIDS awareness, artist-commissioned works through our Broadsides project. Exhibitions evolve from Visual AIDS collaboration with exhibiting arts venues. Visual AIDS enables public dialogue and scholarship around AIDS and visual art. Visual AIDS has successfully produced a variety of Open Call projects resulting in exhibitions, catalogs, and printed matter. Visual AIDS publishes catalogs and artists' monographs. Visual AIDS provides lectures and collaborative opportunities to several local and international schools.

Artists With HIV & Artists Lost to AIDS

Our largest program, the Frank Moore Archive Project (FMAP), is a slide library and public resource, the source of exhibitions, publications, and events, and a service to artists and estates. Since its founding in 1994, the Archive has provided free, continual photo-documentation of art work to any and all professional visual artists with HIV and the estates of artists who have died of AIDS. Visual AIDS offers grants for artist supplies, and limited emergency funds.

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History

Visual AIDS was one of the first national initiatives to record the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the artistic community. It brought together the arts and AIDS communities through its renowned national projects DAY WITH(OUT) ART, Night Without Light, and The Ribbon Project.

DAY WITH(OUT) ART has evolved since its inception in 1989 to become a day with art -- a collaborative project by over 6,000 arts communities around the world which demonstrates the power of art to raise awareness of the ongoing AIDS pandemic. For one day -- December 1st/World AIDS Day each year -- it encourages the arts communities to remember those who have died from AIDS related illnesses and brings together diverse audiences in shared commemoration.

The Ribbon Project was created in 1991 by the Visual AIDS Artists Caucus, a group of artists who wished to create a visual symbol to demonstrate compassion for people living with AIDS and their caregivers.

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Mission

Founded in 1988 by arts professionals as a response to the effects of AIDS on the arts community and as a way of organizing artists, arts institutions, and arts audiences towards direct action, Visual AIDS has evolved into an arts organization with a two-pronged mission. 1) Through the Frank Moore Archive Project, the largest slide library of work by artists living with HIV and the estates of artists who have died of AIDS, Visual AIDS historicizes the contributions of visual artists with HIV while supporting their ability to continue making art and furthering their professional careers. 2) In collaboration with museums, galleries, artists, schools, and AIDS service organizations, Visual AIDS produces exhibitions, publications, and events utilizing visual art to spread the message "AIDS IS NOT OVER."

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