AIDS Is Everyday / April

AIDS is an everyday experience. The dates on this calendar all relate to the AIDS crisis. Some are globally known; others are drawn from personal experiences.

This online calendar is produced in partnership with Visual AIDS and is an extension of the exhibition “EVERYDAY,” which was curated by Jean Carlomusto, Alexandra Juhasz and Hugh Ryan in 2016. The exhibition and accompanying print calendar explored the AIDS crisis—historically and currently—through the lens of art and ephemera that examines and evidences daily experiences and practices in response to HIV/AIDS. Artists featured in the “EVERYDAY” exhibition were invited to submit as many dates to the calendar as they desired.

We invite you to reflect upon these dates, and this artwork, in dialogue with one another. We also encourage you to submit dates of your own by clicking here. Submissions may include the date of your diagnosis, the date of the loss of a loved one to AIDS-related illness or a significant milestone in your life with HIV/AIDS.

New submissions will be continually added to the calendar because AIDS is not over.

APRIL 1

President Ronald Reagan delivers his first “major speech” on AIDS. (1987)

The first issue of POZ magazine is published, featuring a cover story about Ty Ross, the HIV-positive grandson of former Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. (1994)

Global activists confront big pharma in April Fool’s Day protests. (2016)

APRIL 2

ACT UP member Bob Rafsky confronts presidential candidate Bill Clinton at a New York City fund-raiser to demand executive action on AIDS. (1992)

APRIL 3

ACT UP Golden Gate holds a demonstration at Abbott Labs to demand the release of clarithromycin to treat the opportunistic infection Mycobacterium avium intracellulare. (1991)

Singapore bars a gay Christian-pop duo from Los Angles from appearing at an AIDS awareness concert, arguing that its performance would promote homosexuality. (2005)

APRIL 4

Bill Clinton meets with members of ACT UP and UAA (United for AIDS Action) to discuss his AIDS policies, agrees to have people living with HIV speak to the Democratic Convention. (1992)

APRIL 5

Documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs dies of AIDS-related complications at age 37. (1994)

Activist Keith Cylar dies of AIDS-related causes at age 45 in New York City. Cylar helped to create ACT UP’s Housing Committee and its spin-off organization, Housing Works. (2004)

APRIL 6

Artist and activst Chloe Dzubilo dies. (2011)

APRIL 7

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House launch “Act Against AIDS,” a multiyear, multifaceted initiative designed to reduce HIV incidence in the United States. (2009)

APRIL 8

Ryan White dies of an AIDS-related illness at age 18. (1990)

Broadway Bares, an annual fundraiser for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, is born when seven of Broadway’s hottest men dance nearly naked on the bar at Splash, a popular gay club in New York City. (1992) 

ACT UP members bring Haitian refugees with T-cell counts of less than 200 to New York from the Guantanamo detention center. (1993)

APRIL 9

Princess Diana, in an effort to end HIV-related stigma, shakes hands with a person living with AIDS on the new AIDS ward at Middlesex Hospital in London. (1987)

New York City Mayor David Dinkins names Ronald Johnson of the Minority Task Force on AIDS as the first citywide coordinator of AIDS policy. (1992)

APRIL 10

National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day

APRIL 11

The first issue of AIDS Treatment News, an influential biweekly newsletter by LGBT activist John S. James dedicated to educating people about HIV and AIDS, is released. (1986)

APRIL 12

ACT UP members hold a sit-in outside Mayor Giuliani’s office in City Hall to protest DAS cuts. (1995)

APRIL 13

U.S. Representative Henry Waxman convenes the first congressional hearings on AIDS at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood, California. (1982)

Actor Stephen Stucker, who appeared as Johnny, the air traffic controller in the film Airplane!, dies of AIDS-related complications. He was one of the first actors to publicly announce that he was living with HIV. (1986)

Albert J. Winn’s monograph My Life Until Now is published by Chris Rauschenberg. Winn’s photographs reflect his identity as a gay, Jewish man living with AIDS. (2015)

APRIL 14

APRIL 15

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence make their first appearance in San Francisco on Easter Sunday. The queer nuns of this international order devote themselves to promoting human rights and raising money for AIDS-related causes. (1979)

The First International AIDS Conference convenes in Atlanta. (1985)

Figure skater John Curry, who won a gold medal for England at the 1976 Winter Olympics, dies of AIDS complications at age 44. (1994)

Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita discloses her HIV status on Instagram after an ex-boyfriend threatens to go public with the information. (2018)

APRIL 16

The Oprah Winfrey Show airs the episode “A Secret World of Sex: Living on the ‘Down Low,’” which tackles the issue of Black men who don’t identify as gay but have sex with men, suggesting that it’s putting Black women at risk of acquiring HIV. (2004)

APRIL 17

APRIL 18

National Transgender HIV Testing Day

APRIL 19

Princess Diana makes international headlines when she is photographed at a London hospital shaking the hand of a patient living with HIV. (1987)

Group Material’s AIDS Timeline opens at the Whitney Biennial. (1991)

A revival of 1985’s off-Broadway drama The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer opens on Broadway. (2011)

APRIL 20

Silence=Death buttons proposed at ACT UP meeting (Avram Finkelstein pays for first 1000.) (1990)

APRIL 21

ACT UP/NY joins ACT UP/Atlanta to protest a South Carolina provision that would allow persons with AIDS to be quarantined. (1989)

Sir Elton John performs on American Idol’s Idol Gives Back charity music event to raise AIDS awareness and encourage donations to his AIDS foundation. Other performers at the event include Alicia Keys, Carrie Underwood, the Black Eyed Peas, Annie Lennox and Mary J. Blige. (2010)

APRIL 22

Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart premieres at The Public Theater in New York City. (1985)

Long-term survivor Julie Lewis (mother of musician Ryan Lewis) launches The 30/30 Project, an initiative to improve health care access by funding the construction of 30 medical facilities worldwide. (2014)

APRIL 23

Secretary of Health Margaret Heckler announces that scientists have discovered that the probable cause of AIDS is the virus known as HIV. (1984)

The Lesbian Caucus of ACT UP forces Secretary of Health and Human Services to meet with 15 lesbians with AIDS. (1993)

APRIL 24

Arne Vidar Røed, a Norwegian sailor and truck driver, dies in 1976, becoming the earliest confirmed HIV case in Europe. (1976)

A memorial and march take place in Harvey Milk Plaza for ACT UP San Francisco member Terry Sutton, who died of AIDS-related causes weeks earlier on April 11. (1989)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues the first national treatment guidelines for the use of antiretroviral therapy in adults and adolescents living with HIV. (1998)

APRIL 25

Go Figure presented by Visual AIDS opens at The LGBT Center. (2002)

The exhibition I, You, We opens at the Whitney Museum of Art featuring work by Hugh Steers. (2013)

APRIL 26

ACT UP Paris members douse pharma giant Pfizer’s French headquarters with blood, protesting the company’s testing of potentially harmful experimental drugs on ailing people with HIV. (2005)

APRIL 27

Director Howard Brookner dies of AIDS-related complications. (1989)

China lifts its 20-year-old ban on entry into the country by foreigners living with HIV, other sexually transmitted infections and leprosy. (2010)

APRIL 28

APRIL 29

The first Western blot blood test kit to detect HIV antibodies is approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (1987)

Falsettos—a musical that follows a Jewish New Yorker as he leaves his wife and son in 1979 for a male lover who dies two years later of a mysterious “gay cancer”—opens on Broadway. (1992)

The Tony Award–winning play Rent opens on Broadway. (1996)

APRIL 30

Grahame Perry is nominated for Project Inform’s Volunteer of the Year. (1997)

St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village closes. Founded in 1849, the hospital took in survivors from the Titanic, served as a triage center for survivors of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and was the epicenter of the early AIDS epidemic in New York City. (2010)

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About the Artwork

I took this off-the-cuff photograph of my friend and collaborator Ted Kerr at the ACT UP 25th Anniversary Protest on Wall Street in 2012. Embroidery has always been a feminist tactic I employ to make portraits of my friends that convey their day-to-day lives. Ted is steadfast in his activism, and his dedication to social justice is an everyday practice for him. Working in textiles allows me to take my work anywhere with me and is an everyday practice for me. I often stitch on the subway or at lectures or when I am hanging out with friends. Everyday, I see my friends, slowly manifesting images of them through thread. 

—LJ Roberts

Founded in 1988, Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to raising AIDS awareness and creating dialogue around HIV issues today, by producing and presenting visual art projects, exhibitions, public forums and publications—while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. Visual AIDS is committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement.

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