NAMES Project’s AIDS Memorial Quilts on display at Renaissance Center

Release Date: 11/12/2004. Expired: 1/6/2005

One man’s desire to remember victims of AIDS led to the creation of what is now recognized as the largest community art project in the world. The AIDS Memorial Quilt, with the names of more than 44,000 victims of the disease, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and has been viewed by more than 14 million people.

Four 12-foot by 12-foot panels from the AIDS Memorial Quilt will be displayed at The Renaissance Center in Dickson Nov. 22-Jan. 6. A reception for the exhibit will be 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1, which is World AIDS Day.

The Quilt display corresponds with a community awareness theme for The Renaissance Center’s 6th annual Little Masters Exhibit, which features artwork created by Dickson County students. This year’s theme is The Cure Quilts and participating schools have selected a societal or environmental issue about which the students will create awareness quilts out of a variety of mediums.

While the students’ projects will be displayed Nov. 22-Jan. 6 inside the Visual Arts Gallery at The Renaissance Center, the AIDS Memorial Quilt panels will be displayed in the center’s East Wing outside the gallery.

“These quilts are leased from the NAMES Project Foundation in an attempt to generate awareness for the world AIDS crisis,” said Curtis Southerland, curator for The Renaissance Center. “The panels are much too large to properly display in our gallery so they will be exhibited along the East Wing.”

The AIDS Memorial Quilt was initiated by Cleve Jones, who was the organizer of an annual candlelight march in San Francisco to remember Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. While planning the 1985 march, Jones learned that more than 1,000 San Franciscans had died from AIDS. He asked his fellow marchers to write on placards the names of friends and loved ones who had died from the disease and when those placards were taped to the wall of the San Francisco Federal Building, it looked like a patchwork quilt.

Inspired by the sight, Jones and friends began planning a larger memorial and a year later he created the first panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in memory of his friend Marvin Feldman. The NAMES Project Foundation was created by Jones, Mike Smith and others in June 1987.

That October the Quilt was displayed in Washington D.C. for the first time with 1,920 3-foot by-6-foot panels, each honoring an AIDS victim. It returned to Washington in 1988 with 8,288 panels and the tradition of reading the names displayed on the quilts began.

By 1992, the AIDS Memorial Quilt included panels from every state and 28 countries and in January 1993 the NAMES Project Foundation was invited to march in President Clinton’s inaugural parade.

The Quilt has now grown to more than 44,000 panels, each displaying a name. It was last displayed in its entirety in Washington in 1996.

Sections of the Quilt are used in displays throughout the world to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic and those displays have raised more than $3 million for AIDS service organizations.

“The AIDS Memorial Quilt has taken the American tradition of quilt-making and brought into the realm of activism while also serving to bring a country together behind a cause,” said Southerland. “This Quilt is a growing memorial and a vehicle for public education, while at the same time existing as a touching and moving work of art.”

For more information on the AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibit or the Little Masters Exhibit in the Visual Arts Gallery, contact Southerland at (615)740-5519 or .

The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.

Visit the Visual Arts Gallery page for more about the gallery.

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