NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt display, Minneapolis

Begun in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco in 1987, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt grew into a nationwide community art project memorializing those who had been killed by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Lovers, families, and friends of people who had died sewed quilt panels; others created them for individuals they had never met. In 1988, the quilt embarked on a national twenty-city tour and arrived at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis on July 16.

In 1988, there was little mainstream political will to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which had been first identified in 1981. Though it affected all people, HIV/AIDS had been stigmatized as a disease associated only with gay men and drug users. NAMES Project director Cleve Jones, a leader of the gay rights movement and a human rights activist, stated that the objective of the quilt was not only to combat HIV/AIDS, but to fight the “ignorance, hysteria, and bigotry” surrounding the disease.

A Minnesota NAMES Project committee formed in Minneapolis to coordinate the display of the quilt at the Metrodome. It secured funding and support from Minnesota businesses, organizations, and individuals. On June 25, ten local community centers, hospitals, churches, and schools held workshops for creating and stitching panels.

In early July, the committee began collecting finished quilt panels. Every panel was unique, and poetry, written remembrances, and biographical information accompanied many of them. These stories had already been collected into a volume in order to preserve them. Organizers held fundraising events at gay bars and nightclubs—the Y’all Come Back Saloon and the Gay ‘90s in Minneapolis and Rumours in St. Paul.

Over 1,000 volunteers worked at the Metrodome on July 16 and 17. They dressed in all white and wore color-coded bandanas representing the tasks they had been assigned. Some helped unfold twelve-by-twelve-foot quilt blocks, each made up of eight panels that displayed the names of individuals who had died of HIV/AIDS. The blocks were assembled into groups of four and laid out with pathways so the public could walk among them. In total, 109 twenty-four-by-twenty-four-foot squares were displayed, representing 3,488 people.

The entire NAMES quilt represented the 36,864 people who had died of HIV/AIDS since the epidemic had begun. Weighing more than 11,000 pounds and larger than four football fields, it was one of the biggest public art displays in state history and the largest-ever indoor display of the quilt. A brochure for the event stated that the quilt was “a celebration of life and a way to unlock grief.”

Among the quilt were eighty-one panels memorializing hundreds of Minnesotans. A panel at the center of the display was reserved for visitors to add names of their own. On July 16, local officials, religious leaders, physicians, and community members read the names on the quilt during a public ceremony. State Senator Allan Spear and State Representatives Lee Greenfield and Bruce Vento attended. Minnesotans who had created quilt panels were specifically acknowledged.

On July 17, public viewing of the quilt continued; in the evening the local and national NAMES committees made their closing remarks. Regional panels were officially presented to the National Committee. At eight o’clock in the evening, the quilt display closed.

Other events were held in conjunction with the display. On the evening of July 16 and in the afternoon of July 17, the Magic Circle Ensemble presented “Safe Sex” at the Pillsbury House to benefit the Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP). Beginning at ten o’clock on the evening of July 16, an all-night HIV/AIDS vigil was held at Metropolitan Mt. Sinai Medical Center Chapel. At noon on July 17, the AIDS Film Project held a fundraiser at the Uptown Theater.

All of the money raised during the events supported the display of the quilt and HIV/AIDS services in Minnesota. In the following months, community gatherings were held in Minneapolis to thank volunteers and help people stay engaged in the cause. The Minnesota panels and remembrances traveled with the quilt as it continued on its tour, which culminated in a display on the Capitol Mall in Washington, D.C.