APRIL 1
1987: President Ronald Reagan delivers his first “major speech” on AIDS.
1994: 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.
2016: Global activists confront big pharma in April Fool’s Day protests.
APRIL 2
1992: ACT UP member Bob Rafsky confronts presidential candidate Bill Clinton at a New York City fund-raiser to demand executive action on AIDS.
APRIL 3
1991: ACT UP Golden Gate holds a demonstration at Abbott Labs to demand the release of clarithromycin to treat the opportunistic infection Mycobacterium avium intracellulare.
2005: Singapore bars a gay Christian-pop duo from Los Angles from appearing at an AIDS awareness concert, arguing that its performance would promote homosexuality.
APRIL 4
1992: Bill Clinton meets with members of ACT UP and United for AIDS Action to discuss his AIDS policies and agrees to have people living with HIV speak to the Democratic Convention.
APRIL 5
Marlon RiggsWikipedia
1994: Documentary filmmaker Marlon Riggs dies of AIDS-related complications at age 37.
Keith Cylar, 1998Courtesy of Bill Bytsura
2004: 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.
APRIL 6
2011: Artist and activst Chloe Dzubilo dies.
APRIL 7
2009: 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.
APRIL 8
Ryan White
1990: Ryan White dies of an AIDS-related illness at age 18.
1992: 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.
1993: ACT UP members bring Haitian refugees with T-cell counts of less than 200 to New York from the Guantanamo detention center.
APRIL 9
Ronald Johnson
1992: New York City Mayor David Dinkins names Ronald Johnson of the Minority Task Force on AIDS as the first citywide coordinator of AIDS policy.
APRIL 10
National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day
APRIL 11
1986: 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.
APRIL 12
1995: ACT UP members hold a sit-in outside Mayor Giuliani’s office in City Hall to protest cuts to the Division of AIDS Services.
APRIL 13
1982: 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.
1986: 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.
2015: 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.
APRIL 14
APRIL 15
Wikimedia
1979: 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.
1985: The First International AIDS Conference convenes in Atlanta.
1994: Figure skater John Curry, who won a gold medal for England at the 1976 Winter Olympics, dies of AIDS complications at age 44.
Instagram/lifeball_official
2018: Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita discloses her HIV status on Instagram after an ex-boyfriend threatens to go public with the information.
APRIL 16
2004: 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.
APRIL 17
APRIL 18
National Transgender HIV Testing Day
APRIL 19
Princess Diana visits the London AIDS Wards
1987: Princess Diana makes international headlines when she is photographed at a London hospital shaking the hand of a patient living with HIV.
1991: Group Material’s AIDS Timeline opens at the Whitney Biennial.
2011: A revival of 1985’s off-Broadway drama The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer opens on Broadway.
APRIL 20
1990: Silence=Death buttons proposed at ACT UP meeting (Avram Finkelstein pays for first 1000.)
APRIL 21
1989: ACT UP/NY joins ACT UP/Atlanta to protest a South Carolina provision that would allow persons with AIDS to be quarantined.
2010: 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.
APRIL 22
1985: Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart premieres at The Public Theater in New York City.
Julie LewisBill Wadman
2014: 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.
APRIL 23
1984: Secretary of Health Margaret Heckler announces that scientists have discovered that the probable cause of AIDS is the virus known as HIV.
1993: The Lesbian Caucus of ACT UP forces Secretary of Health and Human Services to meet with 15 lesbians with AIDS.
APRIL 24
1976: Arne Vidar Røed, a Norwegian sailor and truck driver, dies in 1976, becoming the earliest confirmed HIV case in Europe.
1989: 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.
1998: 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.
APRIL 25
2002: Go Figure presented by Visual AIDS opens at The LGBT Center.
2013: The exhibition I, You, We opens at the Whitney Museum of Art featuring work by Hugh Steers.
APRIL 26
2005: 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.
APRIL 27
1989: Director Howard Brookner dies of AIDS-related complications.
2010: China lifts its 20-year-old ban on entry into the country by foreigners living with HIV, other sexually transmitted infections and leprosy.
APRIL 28
APRIL 29
1987: The first Western blot blood test kit to detect HIV antibodies is approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
1992: 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.
The original Broadway cast of Rent from 1996Wikipedia/JessnKat
1996: The Tony Award–winning play Rent opens on Broadway.
APRIL 30
1997: Grahame Perry is nominated for Project Inform’s Volunteer of the Year.
2010: 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.
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.
AIDS Is Everyday was originally produced in partnership with Visual AIDS as an extension of the exhibition “EVERYDAY,” which was curated by Jean Carlomusto, Alexandra Juhasz and Hugh Ryan in 2016. New submissions will be continually added to the calendar because AIDS is not over. Click here to submit an entry for the AIDS IS Everyday calendar.
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