Throughout this week students and local members of the Keene community can visit Carroll House to see panels of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) memorial quilt.
Organized by Chair of the Human Performance and Movement Sciences Department, Mel Adams, in collaboration with Keene Pride, said it was her first time coordinating the event. She said it felt important to show the student community that this is still an ongoing epidemic.
Adams also said it was good to show young people who did not live through the 80s and 90s and the openly homophobic sentiments of the time. She added there was a feeling of government and public animosity at the time, creating a stigma around AIDS.
Director of Mason Library Celia Rabinowitz said she had a personal tie with the quilt; a square she had made was part of the panels that were displayed this week.
Echoing similar concerns about stigma, Rabinowitz talked about her time as a graduate student in New York City in the 80s during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.
“I had a pretty wide circle of friends; one of those friends became ill and it was just at the time people were beginning to understand what AIDS was,” said Rabinowitz. “He got sick pretty quickly and he died. After he died, it was right around the time the quilt was being started and so a friend and I stitched up [and] put together a quilt for him and sent it to San Francisco.”
The quilt panels are on display until Friday, Oct. 10.
Timothy Fitzpatrick can be contacted at
