UK AIDS MEMORIAL QUILT GOES ON SHOW IN TATE MODERN’S TURBINE HALL
From today until 16 June 2025, Tate Modern’s visitors have a rare opportunity to see the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt. Begun around 1989, this vast work consists of 42 quilts and 23 individual panels which represent 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS. Laid out in a grid across the entire floor of the Turbine Hall, echoing how it has previously been shown outdoors, it continues to raise awareness of the ongoing AIDS pandemic.
The UK AIDS Memorial Quilt is one chapter of the largest community art project in the world. It began in the USA in 1985, when American activist Cleve Jones started inviting people to create textile panels to commemorate the friends, family and loved ones they lost to AIDS. These individual panels were sewn together to create larger quilts, which were then shown outdoors as a form of protest to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS. In the late 1980s, Scottish activist Alastair Hume visited San Francisco, where he witnessed an early display of the quilt. When Hume returned home to Edinburgh, he began coordinating the creation and display of a UK version, as many others did around the world. One of its largest public showings was the ‘Quilts of Love’ display in June 1994 at Hyde Park Corner, London, presenting selected panels from the US and the UK, alongside sections created by fashion designers.
UK AIDS Memorial Quilt
12–16 June 2025
Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG
Admission is free
More information at tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern
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Readings of the names featured in the Quilt will take place in the Turbine Hall from 11:00-12:15 and 14:00-15:15 on Saturday 14 June 2025, opened with a poem from Bakita Kasadha.
