What is the AIDS Quilt?
The AIDS Memorial Quilt, initially conceived by Cleve Jones in San Francisco in 1985, is the largest piece of folk art in the world, commemorating the lives of more than 100,000 individuals who have been lost to the AIDS epidemic. Jones, like a lot of members of the LGBTQ community in large cities in the 1980s and 90s, lost numerous friends and loved ones to AIDS. Inspired by a desire to memorialize the lives of those who had died from AIDS, Jones helped create the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial in 1987, creating the first panel in memory of Marvin Feldman, a friend of Jones’ who passed away from AIDS complications. From this moment on,
Cleve Jones
the AIDS quilt gained major traction, with quilt panels and names of those lost to AIDS being sent to San Francisco from around the United States. On October 11, 1987, during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the Quilt was displayed for the first time at the National Mall. At the time of the Quilt’s first showing it included 1,920 panels, each representing an individual who passed away as the result of AIDS. During this historic event, the names of those commemorated by the Quilt were read aloud, which is an impactful tradition that carries on today at almost every display of the AIDS Quilt.
ACT UP Activists
The Quilt’s inaugural showing was a momentous and extremely important occasion, especially in light of the Reagan Administration’s refusal to acknowledge the massive loss of life, disproportionately affecting those in the LGBTQ community and people of color, caused by the AIDS epidemic. In light of the government’s apathy towards these communities that were being devastated, the AIDS Quilt was created as a piece of activist artwork that is inherently political.
Along with organizations like the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which organized “die-ins” in places ranging from government offices, to hospitals, to churches, the AIDS Quilt brought massive attention to the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s. With such visceral displays of the death wrecked by AIDS, including names, pictures, and artifacts of those who had passed away, the government and general public could no longer ignore the epidemic as they previously did. In this way, the creation of the AIDS Quilt shed crucial light on AIDS activism at a time when people were dying en masse without necessary government assistance.
Now, more than 30 years after the Quilt was first unveiled, it weighs 54 tons and is comprised of over 48,000 panels that commemorate the lives of more than 100,000 people that have died from the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Still, the Quilt represents less than 1/7 of the people lost to AIDS in our country, acting both as a loving memorial to those we have lost and a reminder of the oppression and marginalization that the LGBTQ community has had to fight against and must continue to act against in the future. As HIV and AIDS continue to disproportionately impact queer people of color, the AIDS Memorial Quilt serves as the most important commemoration of the ongoing AIDS epidemic in the United States and provides vital education regarding HIV history and prevention.