The AIDS Memorial Quilt is an enormous memorial to celebrate the lives of people who have died of AIDS-related causes. Comprising 48,000 individual panels and weighing an estimated 54 tons, it is the largest piece of community folk art in the world as of 2020.

The National AIDS Memorial has just announced, through a partnership with the AIDS Quilt Touch team, that all 48,000 panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt may now be experienced via an interactive search tool. People anywhere in the world can experience the beauty of the Quilt and witness the love and stories stitched into each panel.

To use this amazing new search tool, click HERE. For example, a search of Gay Games founder Tom Waddell turned up 12 individual panels featuring his name.

If you need a guide to this tool, please see this pdf.

The history of the Gay Games and the AIDS Memorial Quilt are closely intertwined. There are hundreds of Gay Games participants who are memorialized on these panels. Also, at every Gay Games, the International Rainbow Memorial Relay is held in their honor, and a partial selection of panels from the Quilt are displayed in a high-visibility space. As evidence, here are a few photos showing this from the previous three Gay Games events in 2010, 2014, and 2018.

  
Gay Games X, Paris, France, 2018

Gay Games IX, Cleveland, Ohio, 2014

Gay Games VIII, Cologne, Germany, 2010