For the Voices series on Out.com, New York City AIDS Memorial Executive Director, Dave Harper, writes about our 2025 Pride Program, Legends of Drag. Voices is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies.

June is Pride Month, which means New York’s queer community is ready to party and—more than ever this year—stand up for their rights. At a time when the trans community is under attack across the country and even in our forward-looking city, displays of joy, resistance, and community are more essential than ever. Time Out NY mentions two New York City AIDS Memorial events: Legends of Drag and Kinfolk: Portals of Remembrance.

For the June issue of The Art Newspaper, New York City AIDS Memorial executive director Dave Harper penned an op-ed on the importance of supporting LGBTQ+ communities and culture. He writes: “Pride means more than a party, parade or performative allyship; it means committing to community care and remembrance…Organisations that preserve LGBTQ+ history, memory and culture must take on a powerful role: not just to remember, but to resist.”

Congratulations to New York City AIDS Memorial Board Members Ethan Geto and Tucker Woods for their inclusion on the inaugural City & State 2025 Pride Trailblazers list, which highlights the LGBTQ+ advocates and executives who are fighting back.

The New York City AIDS Memorial and the National AIDS Memorial are presenting this free screening of Matt Nadel’s short documentary about “AIDS profiteering” during the early ’90s, when dying patients sold their life-insurance policies for money up front to speculators who’d cash them out for their full value after a death.

In his sound installation “The Gay Chorus: No Time at All,” the artist Matthew Leifheit gathered archival recordings of gay men’s choirs from around the country from the decade before effective H.I.V./AIDS treatments. The result, edited from footage on 53 VHS tapes, is an hourlong “recital” that will loop daily at the New York City AIDS Memorial in the West Village daily throughout June.

In honor of the thirty-fifth anniversary of Haring’s funeral and with the support of the New York City AIDS Memorial, Fenley restaged her 1990 work Bardo with an ensemble cast at the LGBT Community Center. Here, Fenley speaks with Tess Michaelson about the passage of time, the truthfulness of performance, and the expansion of empathic experience.

The NYC AIDS Memorial—a landmark stop on the NYC Pride March and a powerful site of remembrance—will host community programming throughout June. The memorial holds deep historical significance for the city’s LGBTQIA+ community, particularly for those still affected by the AIDS epidemic.

A message from the leaders of AIDS memorials and monuments in San Francisco, New York, and West Hollywood regarding the recent freeze on US foreign aid. We strongly urge the Administration to resume funding immediately and to allow this lifesaving medication to be delivered without delay and the Congress to take all action within its authority to ensure that funding already authorized by federal law continues to flow without interruption.

In this report from Sveriges Radio (Sweden), New York City AIDS Memorial Executive Director Dave Harper speaks about the various ways to keep the legacy of the AIDS epidemic alive.

New Yorkers joined memorials, marches, and readings at several gatherings around the city in commemoration of World AIDS Day, which is observed annually on Dec. 1 [and] continued on Dec. 2 with a reading of the names of people lost to AIDS.

NY1 spent some time at the New York City AIDS Memorial for our observance of World AIDS Day and reading of names on December 2, 2024.

Dave Harper, executive director of the New York City Aids Memorial, joined anchor Rocco Vertuccio "Weekends on 1" Saturday morning to discuss World AIDS Day events happening Sunday in the five boroughs.

Events will be taking place in New York City to mark World AIDS Day, which is commemorated annually on Dec. 1 to bring awareness to HIV/AIDS internationally, acknowledge those living with HIV/AIDS, and pay tribute to the lives lost over the years. The New York City AIDS Memorial is leading a free public observance of World AIDS Day with two days of programming. 

Each year, on December 1, the world gathers to remember those lost to and impacted by HIV/AIDS and champion the ongoing fight against the epidemic. To commemorate World AIDS Day, the New York City AIDS Memorial will host its annual, free, and public observance featuring two days of programming in collaboration with organizations dedicated to bringing communities together in the fight to end HIV/AIDS.

In this New York Times preview by Joshua Barone, a look is taken at Philip Glass’s Fourth String Quartet, written after the death of the artist Brian Buczak, which will be performed at the New York City AIDS Memorial on October 27, 2024.

This story about gay rights pioneer Arnie Kantrowitz's posthumously published new book, "Song of Myself: A Novel" interviews his partner Dr. Larry Mass at the New York City AIDS Memorial.

In this article on the Miami AIDS Memorials Project (MAMP), author Theodore Kerr writes about AIDS Memorial’s strategies for community enagement. He says, “Leaning into community engagement is foundational to the history of AIDS memorials...More recently, organizations like the New York City AIDS Memorial have offered a robust calendar of programming to ensure people are visiting the memorial, both to remember loved ones who have passed away and to honor the fact that AIDS is not over.”

To kick off Pride Month, the New York City AIDS Memorial and the Whitney Museum hosted the second annual Legends of Drag on June 5.

Community members joined together at the New York City AIDS Memorial on June 13 to remember the life of Kathy Ottersten, an out trans ACT UP veteran who died in January.