A Celebration of Lives
The AIDS Memorial Quilt Returns to Asheville.
The Renaissance Asheville Hotel is proud to partner with the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Western North Carolina Aids Project to host this year’s display, November 21 through December 2, 2015.
Activist Cleve Jones began The AIDS Memorial Quilt in 1987. The first 1,920 panels were displayed in the nation’s capital during the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987, to highlight the scale of the epidemic. By 2007, the Quilt included more than 46,000 panels representing over 80,000 people, and it continues to grow. It is a memorial to those lost to AIDS, a tool for preventing new HIV infections, and the world’s largest ongoing community art project.
Each section of the AIDS Quilt is twelve feet square, and typically consists of eight individual three-foot-by-six-foot panels sewn together. There are currently more than 40,000 panels, and virtually every one of them memorializes the life of a person lost to AIDS.
Throughout its history, The AIDS Memorial Quilt has been used to fight prejudice, raise awareness and funding, as a means to link hands with the global community in the struggle against AIDS, and as an effective tool in HIV and AIDS education and prevention.
On Tuesday, December 2, from 7 to 9 p.m., World Aids Day will be celebrated, with a fantastic evening of music and poetry focused on remembering the past, celebrating successes, and hope for the future.
