Sewing Grief Into Memory

The NAMES Project National AIDS Memorial Quilt

You cannot ignore the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It is the largest community folk art project in the world - bigger than 20 football fields. It is usually shown in blocks, each one larger than three king-size beds. But each of the quilt’s 50,000 panels is just six feet by three feet, the same size as a person’s grave.

An older white man with white hair speaks at a podium in front of the AIDS quilt while another man watches.

Cleve Jones on World AIDS Day, 2019. Photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen.

In the 1980s, it was hard to arrange burials for people who died of AIDS. Because of fear and misunderstandings, many funeral homes refused to work with them, and some family members were ashamed their loved ones had died of "gay cancer." Activist Cleve Jones started the AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987 to allow loved ones to honor those who died, even when their families and communities would not.

"And in the funny world that I lived in, that all of us lived in, pain was the bridge that we met on, and that was progress."
-Cleve Jones

A white quilt block with black text. It begins "My name is Duane Kearns Puryear..." and ends "I made this panel myself. If you are reading it, I am dead..."

Quilt panel of Duane Kearns Puryear, 1964-1991. NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

The AIDS quilt is spread out on the National Mall, with people walking on pathways between blocks. The US Capitol is in the distance under a cloudy blue sky.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall. Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Panels have been made by family, friends, community members, and even strangers who are touched by someone’s story. A few panels have even been made by people with HIV themselves, to be added to the quilt when they die. It is a living memorial, with new panels constantly added, as HIV is still epidemic around the world. The NAMES Project Foundation handles new additions and quilt displays, and stores the quilt in San Francisco.

A group of high school students stands around a large quilt block, holding it open.

MSSD students unfold a quilt panel for display. On the Green, Gallaudet University. Vol. 28, no. 10. 1997.

The quilt first appeared on the Gallaudet campus as part of Deaf Way in 1989. Tom Kane, the founder of the Deaf NAMES Project, then sent the panels commemorating deaf people to join the rest of the quilt. For the AIDS Memorial Quilt’s tenth anniversary in 1997, portions were sent to high schools around the country, including two blocks displayed at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf. Nearly 20 years after the initial AIDS outbreak, deaf students were learning about the disease in their classes and meeting deaf people living with HIV.

Sewing Grief Into Memory