Mohawk Valley Community College and the National AIDS Memorial are partnering to bring panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to the Mohawk Valley as part of World AIDS Day observances on Dec. 1, 2023.   

Panels of The Quilt will be on display from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, Nov. 27-Dec. 1, in the Lobby of Payne Hall at the Utica Campus and in the Plumley Complex Atrium at the Rome Campus. This free display of The Quilt, which is being hosted by MVCC’s LGBTQ+ Workgroup and sponsored by MVCC’s Student Congress, will include panels honoring local individuals. MVCC also will host a brief World AIDS Day ceremony at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Dec. 1, in the Payne Hall Lobby in Utica.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a 54-ton, handmade tapestry that stands as a memorial to more than 94,000 individuals lost to AIDS. The Quilt began with a single 3x6 foot panel created in San Francisco in 1987. Today, The Quilt is composed of more than 50,000 individual panels, each one commemorating the life of someone who has died of AIDS. These panels, which come from every state in the nation and every corner of the globe, have been sewn by hundreds of thousands of friends, lovers, and family members into this epic memorial. In a war against a disease that has no cure, The Quilt has evolved as a potent tool in the effort to educate against the lethal threat of AIDS. By revealing the humanity behind the statistics, The Quilt helps teach compassion, triumphs over taboo, stigma, and phobia; and inspires individuals to take direct responsibility for their own well-being and that of their family, friends, and community. The NAMES Project Foundation is the international organization that is the custodian of The AIDS Memorial Quilt. The Quilt can be viewed in its entirety and people can search for names at www.aidsmemorial.org.