Gallery Talk | Living Room, San Francisco, 1986: Curatorial Tour (online)

Curator, Matt Terrell in a a 3D tour and discussion of the exhibition.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt began in San Francisco in 1986 as a way to remember those who died from a mysterious and frightening new disease. A group of friends, including prominent AIDS activist Cleve Jones, gathered in Nancy Pelosi?s living room and began to stitch the beginnings of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Soon people from around the country sent Jones their own panels, and the project grew to become the largest community-based art project in the world. The quilt currently consists of more than 48,000 individual memorial panels and weighs an estimated 54 tons. In 2020, Pelosi announced that the quilt would soon be permanently housed at the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park. Public display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt is part of the National AIDS Memorial?s efforts to bring the Quilt to communities across the United States to raise greater awareness and education about HIV/AIDS and to remember those lost to the pandemic.

Living Room, San Francisco, 1986 will recreate the early days of the quilt, while also bringing in work from contemporary artists (Dr. Cynthia Davis, Aubrey Longley-Cook, Robert Sherer, Joey Terrill) who address issues of HIV/AIDS and its legacy. This exhibit will be an immersive celebration of art as community activism. What viewers will leave with is an understanding of how grassroots projects, like the AIDS Memorial Quilt, can have a long-lasting impact. Viewers will get to step inside a gallery turned living room, and through strategically placed archival material and reproductions, feel like they are witness to history. The mix of artists affected by HIV/AIDS will trace a long legacy of HIV activism as art. As the AIDS Memorial Quilt moves to San Francisco permanently, this exhibition will give viewers a better understanding of this incredible piece of community art.