Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi had a special viewing of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Records last month during the opening week of the Library’s David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery. She was joined by her press secretary, security detail, a reporter from The Advocate, who wrote an article about the visit, and Library of Congress staff.
The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is the largest folk art project in United States history. The Quilt honors the stories and lives of those ones lost to HIV/AIDS. The roughly 50,000 panels (54 tons of tapestry!) dedicated to more than 110,000 individuals are stewarded by the National AIDS Memorial in San Francisco. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress stewards the many letters and remembrances (nearly 200 linear feet!) that arrived with Quilt panels, as well as the institutional records of The NAMES Project.
Pelosi has had a personal connection to the Quilt since the project’s beginnings in San Francisco in the 1980s. “It was a mobilization, and it was really what helped break down barriers of understanding,” she said during her visit.
As a then-new U.S. Congress member, she was also instrumental in gaining approval for the iconic display of the Quilt on the National Mall. At first, organizers were only being offered a small space on the Mall to display a few panels. Recounting the conversation with Department of Interior officials, Pelosi said, “Perhaps you mistook us for someone who thinks small.” To gain the necessary approval, she placated administrators by addressing their primary concern – the life of the grass – by promising that volunteers would lift all the panels every 20 minutes.
In her remarks during a 2019 special event to mark a new phase in stewardship of the Quilt, she noted that Librarian “Dr. (Carla) Hayden spoke so beautifully about having the Library of Congress receive, not the Quilt, but all of the memorabilia associated with it. And in doing so it raises the profile of it, the opportunity for others to see it, the visibility of it. But in return all of this information about the NAMES Project brings luster to the Library of Congress as well. This is a beautiful gift to our nation.”
Items from the AIDS Memorial Quilt collection are on display in the new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery, which opened in June at the Library of Congress. Steve Horwitz, who submitted a Quilt panel in 1989 in memory of his partner, David Keisacker, sent photographs and a written memorial for Keisacker to the AIDS Quilt archive, along with the panel. Those items are on display, as is a sewing machine used by volunteer Dan Olkoski to sew panels for the AIDS Quilt. He was one of the “Quilt Zombies,” a team of sewers who worked through the night preparing for the 1996 display on the Mall. Explore other AFC/VHP collection items in the new Treasures Gallery at this link.
The Library’s commitment to preserving and making accessible this national treasure is evident in the care that archivists Charlie Hosale and Farrah Cundiff and technician Serena Chiu, staff members at the American Folklife Center, provided to the collection during processing. A cadre of Library preservation specialists, technologists, and other experts at the Library have also contributed to work on the collection. Now, with support from the Ford Foundation, the Library is digitizing the collection of correspondence, administrative records, printed material, photographs, and other material that document the AIDS Memorial Quilt. The goal is to have the Panel Maker records online in time for World AIDS Day 2024 in December.