[title]
Yesterday marked World AIDS Day, and for the occasion, city officials unveiled the New York City AIDS Memorial in the West Village across from the former St. Vincent’s Hospital—which, in 1984, became the first medical facility in the country to create a special ward for AIDS sufferers. Marking the 35th Anniversary of the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, the Memorial is dedicated to the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who died from the disease, and represents the culmination of a five-year effort to get it built.
Designed by architects Studio a + i, the Memorial consists of a metal canopy made up of interlocking triangles that hangs above an installations by the artist Jenny Holzer: A series of texts—among them, a quote from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself”—carved into granite panels laid into the ground. The opening of the Memorial follows the designation in June of The Stonewall Inn as a national monument.