PRESS RELEASE: New York City AIDS Memorial Announces June Cultural Programming
As a community site of remembrance, particularly for those impacted by the ongoing AIDS epidemic, the Memorial honors and acknowledges a complex history by serving as a platform for dialogue, advocacy, and programs that examine the multidimensional themes surrounding HIV/AIDS, including joy, mourning, and remembrance. “We are pleased to be again offering programs during Pride Month at the New York City AIDS Memorial, on and off-site, especially after the tremendous response to last year’s programs,” says Dave Harper, Executive Director of the New York City AIDS Memorial. “We are grateful to all of the participating artists and are excited to welcome audiences to the Memorial, not only to remember, but also to renew this living and breathing site with creative energy, and to reflect on the stories of our past to inspire our future.” Events will take place at the New York City AIDS Memorial at St. Vincent’s Triangle, located at Greenwich Avenue and West 12th Street in New York City’s West Village and in the surrounding historic West Village neighborhood. For additional information and directions, please visit nycaidsmemorial.org.
LEGENDS OF DRAG
Wednesday, June 5, 2024, 7 PM
Susan and John Hess Family Theater and Gallery, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, NYC
In honor of Pride Month, and on HIV/AIDS Long-Term Survivors Awareness Day, the New York City AIDS Memorial presents the second annual Legends of Drag revue. Presented in partnership with the Whitney Museum of American Art, this celebratory evening celebrates queens featured in Legends of Drag: Queens of a Certain Age (Cernunnos, 2022), queer elders who have long been cultural and spiritual leaders within their communities.
The evening will feature performances by Linda Simpson (emcee), Simone, Ruby Rims, Egyptt LaBeija, Princess Diandra, Lawanda Jackson, and special guest Agosto Machado—all icons who paved the way for the drag renaissance of today.
Brave, campy, bold, witty, and most of all talented dancers, lip-synchers, live singers, and storytellers, these queens are survivors, thrivers, and ambassadors. As LGBTQ+ people, particularly the trans community, and drag performers, have recently experienced an upsurge in discrimination, uplifting these trailblazers and sharing in their wisdom and joy is one of the most potent antidotes available to younger generations
Tickets start at $10 and will be available beginning May 5, 2024, at nycaidsmemorial.org/legends.
A REMEMBRANCE
Saturday, June 15, 2024, 3 PM
New York City AIDS Memorial76 Greenwich Ave, NYC
Featuring:
Spoken-word performance by aAliy A. Muhammad in conversation with the work of the poet Melvin Dixon
Untold Elegy, a chamber music work for four instruments and a voice composed by Kinan Abou-afach and performed by the Bergamot Quartet and mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland
A staged reading of The Simplest Thing by Cookie Mueller with Tony/Emmy nominated actor Jessica Hecht
For Pride Month, join the Memorial as we utilize the power of art to engage in remembrance and reflection with a series of works and performances created in response to AIDS. Multidisciplinary artist Alex Stadler has curated an afternoon of written work, performance, music, and art. In 2022, Stadler commissioned and selected works from a diverse and accomplished group of living and deceased artists for a memorial and procession entitled Gone and For Ever, created to honor the unclaimed of the early years of the AIDS crisis. Gone and For Ever was the culminating event for an alternative HIV/AIDS memorial, Remembrance, organized by the William Way LGBT Community Center in Philadelphia. Stadler brings pieces and variations from this earlier work to the New York City AIDS Memorial for A Remembrance.
For this day of remembrance, aAliy A. Muhammad will premier an original essay-poem that is a response to the life and work of Melvin Dixon, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1992. aAliy is a poz poet, writer, journalist, and community organizer born and raised in Philadelphia. Syrian-born composer Kinan Abou-afach will lead members of the Bergamot Quartet and mezzo-soprano Elisa Sutherland in the New York premiere of Untold Elegy, a musical work first created for Stadler’s Philadelphia project. Tony and Emmy Award-nominated actor Jessica Hecht will perform a reading The Simplest Thing, a work by actor and writer Cookie Mueller, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1989. A limited edition print by Stadler, featuring an excerpt from The Simplest Thing, will be available for free at the event.
Following these works, the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus will join us for the first time since the Memorial’s 2016 dedication to sing in honor of I Stop Somewhere, Waiting For You, the New York City AIDS Memorial’s new bench dedication program. The program invites the public to remember a friend, a family member, a loved one, a mentor, a hero, or to honor an activist, organization, ally, or noteworthy community member. More information, artist bios, and a schedule of events can be found at nycaidsmemorial.org/remembrance.
Support
Support for Legends of Drag has been generously provided, in part, by Trixie Cosmetics and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, as well as generous individual donors. The New York City AIDS Memorial’s 2024 programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
About the New York City AIDS Memorial
Founded as a grass-roots advocacy effort in early 2011, the New York City AIDS Memorial organization is now a 501(c)(3) corporation with an 17-person board.
The mission of the New York City AIDS Memorial is to honor the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died of AIDS and to acknowledge the contributions of caregivers and activists who mobilized to provide care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research, and alter the drug approval process, ultimately changing the trajectory of the disease. The Memorial, dedicated on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2016, aims to inspire visitors to remember and reflect, and to empower current and future activists, health professionals, and people living with HIV in the continuing mission to end AIDS.
Today, the organization maintains the New York City AIDS Memorial as a highly visible and architecturally significant landmark and a community space for reflection and the recognition of men, women, and children lost to, as well as long-term survivors of, HIV/AIDS; bears witness to the lessons of the epidemic through engagement and free, public community-centered educational, arts, and cultural programming at the Memorial site; and virtually extends the reach of the Memorial through digital content and interactivity. Previous programs have included Jenny Holzer’s #LightTheFight in 2018; the exhibition Visual Impact: On Art, AIDS, and Activism in 2019; the site-specific soundscape installation Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic in 2020; and Steven Evans’ commissioned installation, Songs for a Memorial, in summer 2022.
Media Contact
Van Lundsgaard, THIRD EYE
van@hellothirdeye.com
(212) 355-9009 x 314
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