Where Most Needed

The organization responsible for the AIDS Quilt, the Names Project Foundation (EIN 94-3055367 Form 990), has gone through a nearly complete life cycle in just twenty years.  A feature story in the LA Times by Alan Zarembo brings us up to date. 

Cleve Jones, an AIDS activist, came up with the idea of the quilt in 1987 as a way to bring home the impact of AIDS to mainstream America.  It proved extraordinarily successful.  Less than ten years later, Jones was walking with President Clinton on the Washington Mall where 40,000 panels were on display.  Yet Jones, himself with HIV, is still alive today due to the treatments that have come on-line.  AIDS deaths in the US peaked at 51,000 the year before the quilt was laid out on the Mall.

The transition has been difficult.  New panels still arrive, but the numbers are small (609 in 2005).  The organization moved to Atlanta in 2001 to reduce its rent expense.  Mr. Jones wanted to stage a repeat display of the quilt in Washington before the 2004 presidential election, but instead he was fired as spokesman for the organization.  Current executive director Julie Rhoad pursues a vision of the quilt as an inspiration rather than a tool for activism. 

Budget cut backs have reduced the staff to nine.  (The most recent available Form 990 is from 2003, and shows the organization with income of $1.6 million and a staff of fifteen.)  Small displays of panels still go out—the foundation charges $500 for a single panel and $2,000 for a twenty-panel display to partially defray expenses, but this amounted to only $166,000 in income in 2003. 

The article quotes David Kurtin of the Smithsonian Institution (EIN 53-0206027 Form 990) describing the quilt as "folk art." 

Cleve Jones waits for the day that the Names Project foundation runs out of money and the quilt returns to him.

I'm betting that the quilt will return to the mall—but it will be inside the museum.