An exhibition raising AIDS awareness and presenting panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is now on display at the pre-security area of the International Terminal at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO), Departures – Level 3, Galleries 4B and 4C.
SFO shared the following history of the quilt, a project that was first envisioned by activist and San Francisco Bay Times founding contributor Cleve Jones and that is now the heart of the National AIDS Memorial:
The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a powerful and heartfelt reminder of the ongoing epidemic. Guided by its foundational message of love and compassion, the Quilt raises awareness of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), the most advanced stage of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Through panel making and public displays, the Quilt promotes education to slow the spread of HIV/AIDS worldwide and encourages emotional healing for those affected by the disease. With nearly fifty thousand panels dedicated to more than 110,000 people who have died of AIDS-related illnesses, the Quilt is also the world’s largest community art project.
The Quilt was born out of frustration and anger over the inadequate government response to the initial AIDS crisis. In the early 1980s, AIDS was mysteriously killing gay men at an alarming rate, leading to stigma, prejudice, and widespread misinformation. Human rights activist Cleve Jones (b. 1954) envisioned the Quilt in 1985 when he realized that more than one thousand San Franciscans had died of AIDS-related illnesses with little acknowledgement from outside their community. In June 1987, Jones founded the NAMES Project with Mike Smith (b. 1960) to illustrate the humanity behind AIDS statistics, to provide a means of expression, and to support people living with the disease.
That summer, a small group of volunteers gathered day and night at the NAMES Project headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, furiously making and sewing individual three-by-six-foot panels into twelve-foot-square Quilt blocks. Jones recalled, “The workshop was magical and at the same time devastating. Every day someone would walk in and recognize a name on a panel, learning for the first time that a friend had died … . There wasn’t a day that I didn’t cry, but the miracle of it was that over the sound of the sewing machines you’d hear laughter.”
The NAMES Project held their first large-scale display on October 11, 1987, in Washington, D.C. Volunteers ceremoniously unfolded the Quilt on the National Mall as friends, lovers, and family members of those memorialized read the names on its 1,920 panels. During a national tour in 1988, the NAMES Project fundraised for local AIDS support groups and shipped new panels back to San Francisco. When the Quilt returned to Washington, D.C, that October, it had quickly grown to 8,288 panels. The Quilt was displayed internationally to mark the inaugural World AIDS Day on December 1, 1988, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize the following year.
The entire Quilt was last shown on October 11–13, 1996, in an astonishing thirty-acre display on the National Mall of more than forty-one thousand panels that memorialized people from all walks of life. After the NAMES Project relocated the Quilt to Atlanta in 2002, they created the panel-making program “Call My Name” to represent the disproportionate number of people of color who have died of AIDS-related illnesses.
The Quilt returned to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020 under stewardship of the National AIDS Memorial, and on World AIDS Day 2024, it was displayed on the White House lawn for the first time. With new panels received almost daily and hundreds of displays every year, the AIDS Memorial Quilt continues to grow and evolve in the hope of ending the epidemic.
In addition to Jones, the San Francisco Bay Times would also like to acknowledge the dedication of Gert McMullin, aka the Mother of the AIDs Quilt. She is, according to the National AIDS Memorial, “the only person who has caressed and/or had a hand in sewing each and every panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.”
The AIDS Memorial Quilt exhibit at SFO will be on display through January 25, 2026.
Published on February 13, 2025
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