May 17 at 12:00 pm – June 8 at 8:00 pm

WorldPride Welcome and Visual Arts Center
737 7th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20001

Capital Pride Alliance is partnering with the National AIDS Memorial to display 6 blocks of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The Quilt is on display at the WorldPride Welcome and Visual Arts Center, 737 7th Street NW, which is open to the public on May 17-18, May 24-25, and May 30-June 8 from 12:00-8:00 p.m. The display features the following blocks of the Quilt:

#4289 In remembrance of Max Lee Ahrendt
#4368 In remembrance of Carl D States
#4173 In remembrance of Stephen Loy
#3868, #1287, and #552 in remembrance of DMV residents and international friends

The Quilt is the largest community arts project in the world. Its first panels were created during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis. Today the Quilt consists of 50,000 individually-sewn panels with the names of more than 110,000 people who have died of AIDS.

The Quilt was created in the 1980s during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis by gay rights activist Cleve Jones. While planning a march in San Francisco in 1985, he was devastated by the thousands of lives that had been lost to AIDS in San Francisco, and he asked each of his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died. 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, and inspired by this sight, Jones and friends made plans for a larger memorial. In 1987, a group of strangers began gathering in a San Francisco storefront to document the lives they feared would be forgotten. Their goal was to create a memorial for those who had died of AIDS, and understand the devastating impact of the disease. This served as the foundation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Later that year, nearly 2,000 of its panels were displayed on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

In 1996, the National Memorial Quilt attracted nearly 1.2 million visitors in October 1996 – filling the Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Over the three-day event, more than 40,000 panels were displayed. Notably, President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton attended, marking the last full exhibition of the Quilt on the Mall. By this point, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was starting to see a major decline.

Sharing the Quilt’s powerful stories of activism, resilience, hope, and remembrance, helps connect the story of HIV/AIDS to the important issues impacting our nation today. Throughout the ongoing AIDS crisis, more than 700,000 lives have been lost in this country to HIV/AIDS. Today, HIV is on the rise, particularly among young people, communities of color, and in the Southern United States. Quilt displays are used to raise greater awareness about the story of AIDS, and prevention, treatments, and resources available within the community.

The Quilt can be viewed in its entirety online, and people can search for names on the Quilt at www.aidsmemorial.org/quilt.