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The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a
moving memorial, a powerful tool for prevention education and the largest
ongoing community arts project in the world. Each of the more than
44,000 colorful panels in the Quilt memorializes the life of a person lost
to AIDS.
As the epidemic claims more
lives, the Quilt continues to grow and to reach more communities with its
messages of remembrance, awareness and hope.
The Quilt was conceived in
November of 1985 by long-time San Francisco gay rights activist Cleve
Jones. Since the 1978 assassinations of gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey
Milk and Mayor George Moscone, Jones had helped organize the annual
candlelight march honoring these men. While planning the 1985 march, he
learned that over 1,000 San Franciscans had been lost to AIDS.
He asked each of his fellow
marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had
died of AIDS. At the end of the march, Jones and others stood on ladders
taping these placards to the walls of the San Francisco Federal Building.
The wall of names looked
like a patchwork quilt. Inspired by this sight, Jones and friends
made plans for a larger memorial. A little over a year later, he created the
first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of his friend Marvin
Feldman. In June of 1987, Jones teamed up with Mike Smith and several others
to formally organize the NAMES Project Foundation.
The Inaugural Display
On October 11, 1987, the
Quilt was displayed for the first time on the National Mall in Washington,
D.C., during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
It covered a space larger than a football field and included 1,920 panels.
Half a million people visited the Quilt that weekend.
The overwhelming response to
the Quilt's inaugural display led to a four-month, 20-city, national tour
for the Quilt in the spring of 1988. The tour raised nearly $500,000 for
hundreds of AIDS service organizations. More than 9,000 volunteers across
the country helped the seven-person traveling crew move and display the
Quilt. Local panels were added in each city, tripling the Quilt's size to
more than 6,000 panels by the end of the tour.
The Quilt returned to
Washington, D.C. in October of 1988, when 8,288 panels were displayed on the
Ellipse in front of the White House. Celebrities, politicians, families,
lovers and friends read aloud the names of the people represented by the
Quilt panels. The reading of names is now a tradition followed at nearly
every Quilt display.
In 1989 a second tour of
North America brought the Quilt to 19 additional cities in the United States
and Canada. That tour and other 1989 displays raised nearly a quarter of a
million dollars for AIDS service organizations. In October of that year, the
Quilt was again displayed on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
By 1992, the AIDS Memorial
Quilt included panels from every state and 28 countries. In October 1992,
the entire Quilt returned to Washington, D.C. and in January 1993, the NAMES
Project was invited to march in President Clinton's inaugural parade.
The last display of the entire AIDS Memorial Quilt was in October of 1996.
The Quilt covered the entire National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The Quilt Today
Today there are around 23
NAMES Project chapters
in the United States and 46 independent
Quilt
affiliates around the world.
Since 1987, over 14 million people have visited the Quilt at thousands of
displays worldwide. Through such displays, the NAMES Project Foundation has
raised over $3 million for AIDS service organizations throughout North
America. The Washington, D.C. displays of October 1987, 1988, 1989,
1992 and 1996 are the only ones to have featured the Quilt in its entirety.
The Quilt was nominated for
a Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and is the largest community art project in the
world. The Quilt has been the subject of countless books, films, scholarly
papers, articles, and theatrical, artistic and musical performances, "Common
Threads: Stories From The Quilt" won the Academy Award as the best
feature-length documentary film of 1989. The Quilt has redefined the
tradition of quilt-making in response to contemporary circumstances. A
memorial, a tool for education and a work of art, the Quilt is a unique
creation, an uncommon and uplifting response to the tragic loss of human
life.
How big is the Quilt?
As of August,
2003, there are 5,644 blocks making up the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and most
blocks are composed of 8 individual panels. The Foundation office in
Atlanta, GA, continues to receive new
panels every week - 106 new panels in
January 2003 alone!
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