• By Johanna McCrehan
• June 10, 2022

The AIDS Memorial Quilt: An Alternative Model for Commemoration

The National Mall is home to many of the nation’s most treasured institutions and landmarks. These sites are largely built memorials and museums, which are seen as traditional models of commemoration. However, alternative forms of commemorative works can offer opportunities to respond to current events, incorporate broader perspectives and contributors, and reach more audiences and locations.

Consider the 2021 exhibit In America: Remember., which displayed over 660,000 white flags across the Washington Monument grounds to memorialize the loss of American lives to COVID-19. The Apollo 50: Go for the Moon projection on the Washington Monument in 2019 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and first moon landing with thousands gathered to partake in the viewing event.

These types of commemorative events arguably began with the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987 during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. Now too large to be displayed all at once on the National Mall, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is a 54-ton tapestry with nearly 50,000 panels dedicated to more than 110,000 victims of the disease.

Each year, parts of the quilt are displayed across the country in places of learning, work, worship, and gathering (NCPC hosted a display in 2016). On the National AIDS Memorial website, visitors can also view the entire quilt, search for names, browse stories, and order personalized photos of individual panels. For its 35th anniversary this year, and in celebration of Pride Month, the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be exhibited in San Francisco from June 11-12, 2022, in the largest display of its history.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt created a watershed moment that demonstrated how special commemorative works can significantly expand opportunities for commemoration and broaden subject matter representation. Its exhibition and highly visible presence on the National Mall helped captivate the national conversation on AIDS, injected humanity and the need for empathy into that conversation, and helped advance a powerful and important movement.

To broaden the breadth of representation and be more inclusive of all people and events that helped to shape America, NCPC is partnering with the Trust for the National Mall and the National Park Service on Beyond Granite, a pilot program to foster a more dynamic and representative commemorative landscape on the National Mall and in Washington, DC.

The pilot program, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Monuments Project, will invite artists and others who give voice to diverse lived experiences to design and install limited-engagement works around the National Mall and in Washington, DC during 2023. These works will showcase the nation’s history and future and help re-envision what memorials can look like, how they can be created, and how they can be understood in the national conversation. The project will also engage local communities and subject-matter experts for inclusive and wide participation in the commemorative process to ensure that all stories can be heard and represented in the iconic landscape on the National Mall and in Washington, DC. More information about Beyond Granite and the AIDS Memorial Quilt can be found at the links below.

AIDS Memorial Quilt 35th Anniversary AIDS Memorial Quilt Panel Discussion Beyond Granite