Get your Pride on at the NYC AIDS Memorial—that origami trellis by the former St. Vincent’s in the West Village—with drag stars Caracol de Cuba, Dina Jacobs, Egyptt LaBeija, Kelly Ray, Ruby Rims, and Linda Simpson followed by a silent disco (which won’t disturb the condo owners who replaced the hospital) with sets by Oscar Nñ, DJ CHES, br0nz3_g0dd3ss, and DJ Nikki Jax.

Recognized for his beautiful transpositions of the intimate world into art, Jim Hodges is set to debut his new sculpture, Craig’s closet, this week. The granite and bronze sculpture, which is a rendering of a literal closet, asks viewers to think about items they keep sacred. The piece brings the personal into the public, confronting viewers with the boundaries between both. The sculpture will be on display for one year, continuing the New York City AIDS Memorial’s public art program.

As part of NYC Parks’ Art in the Parks program, a new exhibit by Jim Hodges will come to life at New York City’s AIDS Memorial Park. Many people have closets, these compartments in homes, offices, or bedrooms where we store all the big and small things that make up our lives. Craig’s Closet consists of a replication of an ordinary bedroom closet made of painted bronze and granite. The artwork aims to commemorate the lives of millions of people lost in the AIDS epidemic by bringing a sense of personal connection. 

Read more about the New York City AIDS Memorial’s spring season featuring free, public programs including commissions and presentations of sculpture, dance, poetry, live music, and performances by Ishmael Houston-Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Nick Hallett, Peter Cramer, Jack Waters, NYOBS, Jim Hodges, Pamela Sneed, Mazz Swift, Natalie Greffel, and the Legends of Drag.

New Yorkers recognized World AIDS Day 2022 last Thursday, Dec. 1. For four straight hours, names of those who died from the epidemic were read in Greenwich Village for the first in-person observation at the NYC AIDS Memorial since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond a day of remembrance, Thursday was also a day of action.

Community members joined together at the New York City AIDS Memorial on December 1 for the 31st annual “Out of the Darkness” vigil and march in commemoration of World AIDS Day. Housing Works and the New York City AIDS Memorial led an afternoon of programming and the reading of the names. There was also free food provided by LGBTQ chefs.

A decades-old memorial for people who died from AIDS-related complications has found a new home in a New York City church. On Friday, the Jesuit-run Church of St. Francis Xavier will host its annual service to mark World AIDS Day, observed on Dec. 1, an annual tradition at the parish going back decades. But this year, the evening will include the blessing of more than 500 individual plaques that comprise a memorial recently installed in the church, situated in front of an already existing space dedicated to remembering the early days of the crisis.

Thursday is World AIDS Day, and for the first time since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the names of New Yorkers we've lost were read at a memorial in the West Village. As CBS2's Alice Gainer reports, while today is a day to remember, it's also a day to raise awareness about the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS.

Gay City News lists the New York City AIDS Memorial’s World AIDS Day observance as a thing to do this week and includes mention of the Out of the Darkness Vigil.

T Magazine writes about memorials, including the New York City AIDS Memorial, mentioning our AIDS Memorial Quilt-Making Workshops at the Whitney which took place in October. The author, Mark Harris, writes: “I think of grief and anger whenever I walk through New York City’s AIDS Memorial, an open space in the West Village that was completed in 2016 by the Manhattan-based Studio AI Architects … I love the fact that it is built on a triangular island with a design created out of dozens of triangles, a shape uniquely meaningful in the L.G.B.T.Q. movement and a statement that the site is intended to memorialize activism as well as loss.”

To mark the 35th anniversary of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, New Yorkers who lost loved ones or whose lives have been impacted by HIV will have a chance to add to the 54-ton tapestry this weekend. The New York City AIDS Memorial is hosting workshops at the Whitney Museum this weekend for locals to work alongside artists to create new panels to add to the quilt, honoring the memory of those lost and raising awareness about the devastating disease that has killed more than 40.1 million people worldwide since 1981.

Gert McMullin is one of the six activists who cofounded the AIDS Memorial Quilt in San Francisco in 1987 and has served as the Quilt’s conservator ever since. In partnership with the National AIDS Memorial and Maharam, we hosted a series of public quilt-making workshops at the Whitney Museum on October 14 and 15, 2022 to mark the Quilt's thirty-fifth anniversary. Read more from Gert here.

In a changed world, gay men still feel the anxiety (and lessons) of the darker days of HIV/AIDS. Article features quotes by New York City AIDS Memorial Board Member Eric Sawyer

DJ Lady Bunny and DJ Lina headlined a “Dance for Memorial” silent disco event at the New York City AIDS Memorial on June 29. Participants wore headphones and danced away in the area surrounding the memorial at West 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue in Greenwich Village.

One critical goal of public art is to engage with every passerby in order to foster a dialogue within communities. For multimedia artist, Steven Evans, music is just one way of achieving this. After coming of age during the height of the United States’ AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, Evans has drawn inspiration from his youth’s pop songs for his latest temporary installation at New York City’s AIDS Memorial. The result memorializes and celebrates the queer struggle—then and now.

At the beginning of Pride Month, the New York City AIDS Memorial unveiled Steven Evans’s Songs of a Memorial (through September 6), adorning the permanent monument with 12 text-based, polychromatic, LED sculptures. To celebrate the close of the month-long celebration, DJ Lady Bunny and DJ Lina Bradford will lead a silent disco at the site—just leave an ID or a credit card for a free set of headphones.

Few graphics are as instantly recognizable as the “Silence=Death” poster created in 1986 by the American artist Avram Finkelstein and the Silence=Death Collective. Speaking at NADA New York in early May with executive director of the NYC AIDS Memorial organization Dave Harper, Finkelstein recalled the conception of the poster and its subsequent meaning almost 40 years later.

The New York City AIDS Memorial is offering a Pride Weekend cool-down with a silent disco dance party featuring two LGBTQ dance floor icons, DJ Lady Bunny and DJ Lina Bradford. This free, community-focused Pride celebration will follow “Meet Me on the Dance Floor,” a storytelling event where people will share stories about the nightlife, partying, clubs, and connecting under the disco ball.

Steven Evans knows how a moment on the dancefloor can echo down the years. Over the past three decades, this Houston-based multimedia artist, writer and curator has explored the connections between music, language, memory, identity, and collectivity via his sculptural and installation work.

Dancing at an AIDS memorial? How could you not, when you hear upbeat anthems like “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” “It’s Raining Men,” “Why,” “All Around the World” and “Never Can Say Goodbye.” Spanning the 1970s and ’80s, these dance floor classics were part of the soundtrack for the generation of young adults first decimated by HIV and AIDS. The tracks are also the inspiration for Songs for a Memorial, the latest art installation and related programming—including a silent disco and storytelling event—at the New York City AIDS Memorial.