Located on San Vicente Blvd at West Hollywood Park, the AIDS Monument will have 147 bronze traces that will each light up into the evening. The traces are the vertical elements meant to hoor the individuals lost and the battles fought as designed by artist Dan Tobin. The monument walls will be made with 3-foot by 3-foot squares of travertine imported from Turkey. “Today we are installing 25 of the traces. There will be 6 batches of 25; we made a total of 150 traces. We will install 147 of them and keep 3 as backups in case we need them. Made of bronze, finished with a dark patina almost resembling an older penny. We noticed that when they were made in a lighter patina, or more golden color, they got exposed to the light and the sun and the moisture of the air and they were darkening in a patchy way. So we decided to finish in a slightly darker patina so when they age, so to speak, they won’t be as blotchy. The lights will come on at night.”
“We are at the end of the monument. We are installing from the back to the front. This grid pattern is meant to be the coming together of the community, the protease inhibitors that saved lives. This is almost like 1996 here — the end of the height of the epidemic — but the traces toward the front are an irregular pattern meant to represent the chaos and the fear that were felt in the early ’80s until the time we actually figured out a way to save lives,” said Rappaport. The monument is expected to open to the public at the end of 2025.
