View AIDS Memorial Quilt at Harvey Mudd College

Sections of the internationally celebrated AIDS Memorial Quilt—the 54-ton, handmade tapestry that stands as a memorial to more than 94,000 individuals lost to AIDS—will be on view beginning Dec.1 at Harvey Mudd College. This free display of The AIDS Memorial Quilt is being hosted by Harvey Mudd and Claremont University Consortium Health Education Outreach. Visitors may view the quilt Dec 1–5 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Caryll Mudd and Norman F. Sprague Jr. Gallery in the R. Michael Shanahan Center for Teaching and Learning.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt began with a single 3 x 6 foot panel created in San Francisco in 1987. Today, The Quilt is composed of more than 48,000 individual 3 x 6 foot panels, each one commemorating the life of someone who has died of AIDS. These panels come from every state in the nation, every corner of the globe and they have been sewn by hundreds of thousands of friends, lovers and family members into this epic memorial, the largest piece of ongoing community art in the world.

By revealing the humanity behind the statistics, The AIDS Memorial Quilt helps teach compassion, triumphs over taboo, stigma and phobia; and inspires individuals to take direct responsibility for their own well-being and that of their family, friends and community. Established in 1987, The NAMES Project Foundation is the international organization that is the custodian of The AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Julie Rhoad, executive director of The NAMES Project Foundation explains, “We are thrilled to have the chance to share The AIDS Memorial Quilt with your community. These handmade blocks, created by friends and family, tell the stories of individuals who have lost their lives to AIDS. We bring you their stories in the hope of inspiring compassion, healing and personal responsibility. We thank Harvey Mudd for hosting this event and we invite you all out to see what wonderful art we have created together as a nation.”

Sections are continuously on display across the country in schools, churches, community centers, businesses, corporations and a variety of other institutional settings all in the hope of making the realities of HIV and AIDS real, human and immediate. To date, more than 15 million people have seen The AIDS Memorial Quilt at tens of thousands of displays throughout the world.

For more information on the upcoming display at Harvey Mudd, contact Karl Haushalter (haushalter@hmc.edu). For more information on The NAMES Project and The AIDS Memorial Quilt, visit aidsquilt.org or call the national headquarters at 404.688.5500.