AIDS Memorial Quilt Will Be On Display At NYU

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — Nine quilt panels memorializing people who died of AIDS will be put on display at NYU's library next week.

As a part of New York University's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, NYU will display nine 3-by6-foot panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt at the library on the south side of Washington Square Park beginning September 12.

"These quilt pieces bear witness to our humanity and serve to archive our history. NYU is located in Greenwich Village, just a few blocks from St. Vincent's Hospital, where many AIDS patients were treated and spent their final days," Marvin Taylor, curator for the arts at NYU Libraries, said in a statement.

The quilt project through the NAMES Project Foundation has raised $3 million for AIDS service organizations — an effort with activist origins dating back to 1987.

"The intimacy and tradition of the quilt as a symbol of comfort and warmth has a long history," Taylor said.

Each panel is handmade, sewn by friends, partners and family. The 48,000 panels that make up the quilt travel for displays worldwide.

For this display, curators Taylor and NYU arts professor Karen Finley chose nine panels highlighting people in the trans community, incarcerated men and women, including a panel dedicated to incarcerated women, and a panel commemorating NYU students and faculty who died of AIDS, like Paul Fitz Simmons.

Celebrities Keith Haring, Halston, Liberace, Perry Ellis, Rock Hudson, Robert Mapplethorpe, Freddie Mercury, Anthony Perkins, and Rudolf Nureyev; and other artists will be honored, among several others.

"The trauma to so many, to an LGBT generation, disproportionately felt amongst African Americans and Latinos, needs to be recognized," said Finley, an arts professor at Tisch School of the Arts.

The quilt will be displayed alongside another LGBTQ exhibition that looks at queer life in the mid-1800s through today.

There will be an opening event September 12 at 5 p.m. in the Mamdouha Bobst Gallery at 70 Washington St. — a section for arts displays on the ground floor of the NYU building. Finley will speak at 6 p.m.

The display and opening event are open to the public. The quilt will be displayed until December 15.