The NAMES Project AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome [emphasis added]) Memorial Quilt is a spectacular sight to see. Depending on when and where you view it, it can be tiny, or it can be gigantic. No one can doubt its meaning, its presence, and its passion.
The quilt is actually a series of smaller quilts that are joined together and displayed as a larger project. It is one of the largest grass-roots community art projects in the known world that is “amateur” yet also part of a larger art project. Each quilt panel is roughly 20 feet square and is a series of smaller panels that are three feet by six feet. This is approximately the size of your average grave site.

All the panels are handmade by the loved ones who are left behind when a person is lost to AIDS-related death. They feature the name of the loved one who has passed and come in all tastes and design. They are as unique as the person they honor.

The ‘AIDS Memorial Quilt’ was created in the head of activist Cleve Jones in 1985 while he was at a candle-light vigil in remembrance of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. At that march, Cleve Jones had written the names of loved ones whom had passed from AIDS-related death. These ‘panels’ were to be taped on the San Francisco Federal Building which would then look like a patchwork quilt. This quilt design of the names on paper was eventually the inspiration for the AIDS Memorial Quilt at its creation in 1987. The inspiration behind the quilt was to give the loved-ones of those who died a chance to grieve, to honor, and to remember a life cut so tragically short. Many of the deceased did not have funerals because of the way some funeral homes refused to handle any remains of a person with AIDS, the ignorance of the disease, and the social stigma related to that “gay disease”. This was their loved-ones chance to say goodbye in a way that honored the memory of the person and also honoring the way they were lost. While the whole quilt hasn’t been displayed since 1996, when it was displayed in entirety (to that date) in The Mall in Washington, D.C., many pieces of the quilt are displayed on a traveling basis to organizations, museums, universities, and memorial services. The NAMES Project Foundation and the AIDS Quilt is currently located in Atlanta, Georgia, and consists of more than 46,000 individual memorial panels (over 91,000 people) and weighing an estimated 54 tons (Sources: The AIDS Memorial Quilt, The NAMES Project, NPR, and PBS).

For many, the AIDS Quilt is a sad memorial of our times. It is a reminder that people can and do contract sexually transmitted diseases and die. It is a reminder that the struggle to cure and stop the pandemic known as AIDS. Since the pandemic began, 64.9 million people have contracted HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. However, a time will come when we no longer will have to mourn the numbers we do currently from AIDS. This quilt is a reminder of the struggle and a beacon of hope for a cure one day. It memorializes those lost, and gives hope to those who survive that their loved-ones death was not without meaning.