“The Quilt has become a powerful educator and symbol for social justice. “When we created the first Quilt panels it was to share with as many people possible lives tragically being lost to AIDS and to demand action from our government,” says quilt founder and gay rights activist Cleve Jones in a statement. Together, the panels-sewn into groups of eight-serve as a massive, searchable memorial to the more than 125,000 people who have died of HIV and AIDS since 1980. Now, reports Billy Anania for Hyperallergic, the 1.2-million-square-foot quilt is available to view online in its entirety. Instead, organizers showcased smaller sets of 1,500 squares on each day of the two-week celebration. Twenty-five years later, when the quilt returned to the Mall as part of the 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, it had grown so much in size that its 48,000 panels couldn’t be displayed simultaneously. When the AIDS Memorial Quilt was first displayed on the National Mall in 1987, it contained 1,920 panels commemorating people who had died of the disease.
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