About the New York City AIDS Memorial
The New York City AIDS Memorial honors the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who have died of AIDS and acknowledges the contributions of caregivers and activists who mobilized to provide care for the ill, fight discrimination, lobby for medical research, and alter the drug approval process. The Memorial aims to inspire visitors to remember and reflect as well as empower current and future activists, health professionals, and people living with HIV in the continuing mission to eradicate the disease through the maintenance of our permanent, architecturally significant Memorial as well as through educational and cultural programming.
“At long last, a public, permanent, and very visible landmark that acknowledges…that something beautiful happened in terms of the LGBTQ community’s responding advocacy and caregiving.”
— NBC News
Since our dedication, we have become a sacred site for all New Yorkers to remember, reflect, and renew.
SHARING STORIES OF RESILIENCE
In June 2021, we partnered with the Generations Project to produce two storytelling events, focusing on the lives and experiences of HIV/AIDS Long-Term Survivors, their caretakers, and allies. Victoria Graves and Jeanathan Lei (pictured) joined eight others to share their stories, in person and live-streamed, on the 40th anniversary of the first reports of AIDS by the CDC.
REFLECTING ON THE PAST & FUTURE
Gatherings are commonplace at the New York City AIDS Memorial. Storied organizations like Housing Works and Latino Commission on AIDS regularly utilize the Memorial for gatherings, anniversaries, and other events. Each year since our dedication on World AIDS Day, we have hosted Out of the Darkness, a candlelight vigil (pictured) run for over 30 years and founded by activists Brent Nicholson Earle and Barbara Martinez, among others.
REMEMBERING OUR HEROES
On May 28, 2020, one day after his death, friends, fellow activists, and other mourners gathered at the New York City AIDS Memorial to honor author, activist, and GMHC and ACT UP founder Larry Kramer. A second gathering was held in May 2021, on the one-year anniversary of his death where memories of Kramer’s life, and reflected on his incredible legacy were shared.
We are also a platform for dialogue, discussion, advocacy, and action around the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic.
POLITICAL ADVOCACY
The Memorial regularly serves as a backdrop for political advocacy around issues important to the ongoing fight to end the AIDS epidemic, from former City Council Speaker Corey Johnson (pictured here at a press conference advocating for equitable access to PrEP) to the Latino Commission on AIDS who celebrated National Latinx AIDS Awareness Day by launching a campaign on site.
INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUE
Then a presidential candidate, current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (born 1982) visited the New York City AIDS Memorial with his husband Chasten and activist Peter Staley in June 2019. The Memorial has become an important crossroads for intergenerational connection building, ensuring the history of the epidemic is understood by generations who have never lived in a world without AIDS.
PROTEST & DIRECT ACTION
HIV/AIDS activism has made an indelible mark on direct action today, so it comes as no surprise that the New York City AIDS Memorial often serves as the site of protests - for access to healthcare and life saving medication, LGBTQ+ equality, and gun safety. Groups like ACT UP (pictured), Housing Works, Callen Lorde, Harlem United, Gays Against Guns, and Prep4All have used the Memorial as a site of direct action.
The Memorial is also a place for engaging and free public educational and cultural programs in the visual arts.
JENNY HOLZER: #LIGHTTHEFIGHT
On World AIDS Day 2018, we launched #LightTheFight created by artist Jenny Holzer, where five trucks emblazoned with LED billboards drove through New York, displaying quotes by activists, artists, educators, poets, and people living with HIV. This project reached millions of people through coverage in the press and social media, including a feature in the New York Times.
STEVEN EVANS: SONGS FOR A MEMORIAL
This commissioned installation by Houston-based artist Steven Evans appropriates titles of dance songs tied inextricably to the period surrounding the onset and height of the AIDS epidemic and was launched in June 2022. The installation reflected a narrative of both individual and collective memory and history that speaks to complex relationships between loss and celebration, and enlivening the Memorial with light.
JIM HODGES: CRAIG’S CLOSET
This newly created work by Jim Hodges is sited within New York City AIDS Memorial Park, which lies in the shadow of the former St. Vincent’s hospital and in proximity to many sites central to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A replica of a bedroom closet in granite with additions of painted bronze invites viewers to forge personal connections between complex histories and individual and collective memories.
We also have programs in the performing arts, including dance, theater, poetry, literature, and other community gatherings.
NEIL GREENBERG: THE DISCO PROJECT REMIX
Adapted from The Disco Project (1995), Neil Greenberg’s dance recollection of lives lost to AIDS and an acceptance of his own HIV+ status, this updated remix staged elements of its original choreography creating a shared experience of liberation, trauma, and survival through a trans-visual inquiry into the power of LGBTQIA+ vocal anthems. The four performances in late July 2022 were attended by over 1000 individuals.
HEAD BACK, EYES TO SKY: PAMELA SNEED, MAZZ SWIFT & NATALIE GREFFEL
This experiment in joining text and sound in June 2023 brought together influential poet/performer Pamela Sneed with the remarkable composer/musicians Natalie Greffel and Mazz Swift. Recognized for her compelling spoken voice, Sneed has recently entered more musical realms, which will be explored in this improvisatory context, with Greffel on bass and Swift on violin and keyboards—their three voices joining together.
OPEN REHEARSAL: JOHN BERND VARIATIONS
In 2016, choreographers Ishmael Houston-Jones and Miguel Gutierrez collaborated with musician Nick Hallett to adapt excerpts from John Bernd’s celebrated works into a striking montage for a new generation of performers. This May 2023 open rehearsal featured Raha Benham, Toni Carlson, Alvaro Gonzalez, Charles Gowin, Kris Lee, Johnnie Cruise Mercer, and Alex Rodabaugh and was presented in partnership with Danspace Project.
These programs and events have garnered a wide range of exemplary press and media coverage including in outlets such as:
“This beautiful park and its emotional centerpiece are important reminders to continue our vigilance and, most of all, to educate new generations about the history of AIDS to ensure a future without it.”
— Ralph Lauren
About Our History: A grassroots effort whose time has come
2011: THE IDEA IS BORN
By 2011, over 100,000 New Yorkers have died of AIDS yet there is no significant memorial to honor them. Christopher Tepper and Paul Kelterborn, two men who had never known a time before the epidemic, are inspired to create the New York City AIDS Memorial on a triangular parcel that was once part of the campus of St. Vincent’s Hospital. A grassroots effort begins.
2012: AN INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITION
A competition is launched with a jury of leaders in art, design, and AIDS activism including architects Michael Arad and Elizabeth Diller, Actor Whoopi Goldberg, and Studio Museum director Thelma Golden among other leaders in the arts and activism. Studio a+i is selected to design the Memorial and Jenny Holzer (pictured) is commissioned to create the paver installation.
2013—2016: THE ORGANIZATION IS BUILT
A volunteer-led 501(c)(3) is formed, with an 18-person board of directors chaired by Keith Fox. Over $6 million is raised from a wide array of contributors, both public and private, as well as through special events and artist-created editions. Construction begins in the Summer of 2016. International press coverage reaches over a billion people worldwide.
DECEMBER 1, 2016: OFFICIAL DEDICATION
The New York City AIDS Memorial is dedicated on December 1—World AIDS Day—2016. Over 1,000 New Yorkers, including Mayor Bill DeBlasio, the NYC Parks Commissioner, City Council Members, other local and statewide elected officials, notable activists, and award-winning actors such as Lillias White and Billy Porter, attend the celebration and ribbon cutting.
2019—PRESENT: THE NEXT PHASE
Our first Executive Director joins in June 2019. Increased engagement and public programs are planned on-site and virtually throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Media outlets including The New York Times, New York Magazine, and The Guardian cover the Memorial’s arts and cultural programs and commissions and it is featured in fashion shows, travel guides, books, films, and television.
W.A.G.E. Certification
The New York City AIDS Memorial is certified by Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.). This certification is the first model of its kind and the first in the U.S. to establish a sector-wide minimum standard for compensation, as well as clear guidelines regarding the value of artistic labor.
Indigenous Land Acknowledgement
The land of the five boroughs that make up New York City, including the land on which the New York City AIDS Memorial sits, is the traditional homeland of the Lenape, Merrick, Canarsie, Rockaway, Matinecock, and Haudenosaunee Peoples.
These lands are also inter-tribal trade lands and are under the stewardship of many more indigenous nations today.
New York City is home to the largest populations of Inter-tribal Native American, First Nations, and Indigenous individuals out of any urban city across Turtle Island (the United States).
We acknowledge the systematic erasure of many Nations and recognize those still among us today.
We acknowledge the Peoples of these Nations - their cultures, their communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations - and their resilience throughout the HIV/AIDS epidemic and movement.
We acknowledge and offer deep gratitude to Mannahatta - the land and waters on which we stand.
Statement prepared by the American Indian Community House as a part of the 2020 Program “Hear Me: Voices of the Epidemic”
Accessibility
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Description of the New York City AIDS Memorial: The New York City AIDS Memorial is an abstract canopy of white triangles made of painted structural steel. At the center of the memorial is a granite fountain. The footprint of the memorial is the shape of a triangle in which Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” is inscribed in granite in a circular pattern, an installation by artist Jenny Holzer.