AIDS Memorial Pathway

The AIDS Memorial Pathway (the AMP) opened on 4 June 2021 as Seattle's permanent public-art AIDS memorial. It comprises five commissioned artworks installed across the Capitol Hill neighbourhood along a 750-metre pedestrian route from Cal Anderson Park (see separate entry) to the light-rail station on Broadway. Each work is by a different queer artist and treats a different dimension of Seattle's AIDS history; interpretive stones at each installation explain the piece's specific reference. The five works are: Christopher Paul Jordan's *andimgonnamisseverybody* (a bronze silhouette wall on the Broadway light-rail plaza), Horatio Hung-Yan Law's *We're Already Here* (a granite gathering circle inscribed with names), Yegizaw Michael's *Ribbon of Light* (a translucent glass canopy at Cal Anderson), Storme Webber's *Ancestor Song* (audio installation activated by proximity), and Civilization's *AMP Community Table* (a permanent gathering table with rotating community programming). The AMP is the largest permanent public-art AIDS memorial in the western United States, and one of the few US AIDS memorials that treats the epidemic as a Seattle-specific story rather than a generic national loss. Seattle's AIDS epidemic peaked later than New York or San Francisco's but reached comparable per-capita mortality; the specific Seattle history — Bailey-Boushay House (the West Coast's first residential AIDS-care facility, 1992), the Northwest AIDS Foundation, and the disproportionate loss among Seattle's Native American and Filipino queer communities — is what the pathway makes visible. Free, 24/7 public art in public space. Capitol Hill light-rail station is at the northern end of the route. Best walked at dusk when the interpretive lighting activates. Combine with a walk through the surrounding Capitol Hill queer commercial neighbourhood for a full-afternoon heritage circuit.