Palm Springs City Council approves design for AIDS Memorial in Downtown Park
The City Council approved the Palm Springs AIDS Memorial Thursday night. Councilmembers voted 4-0, with one councilmember absent, to accept the recommendation of the Palm Springs Public Arts Commission to approve the design and placement of the memorial.
The Council also approved allocating $65,000 to the Memorial to assist in the installation and increased the city's funding contribution to be a total of $125,000.
“We are thrilled that the Palm Springs City Council acted on the recommendation of the Public Arts Commission and approved the Memorial,” said Dan Spencer, Task Force spokesperson. “Selecting the highly visible Downtown Park as its location ensures that the many visitors and residents of this city will now have an opportunity to appreciate the significance of the AIDS crisis and its tremendous impact on our community. We thank the many community members who helped us shape the design and scope of this Memorial and are grateful to the Public Arts Commissioners and City Council members who endorsed this project. I am also very grateful to the hard-working members of our Task Force who have been driving this project for many years, and to Phillip K. Smith III for his outstanding design. We now enter our next stage of raising the remaining funds needed so we may install this Memorial on schedule.”
The Memorial is a gift to the City by the Palm Springs AIDS Memorial Task Force and commemorates the many lives lost to AIDS while honoring the caregivers and survivors in the community.
The idea of the memorial has been in progress since 2012. After a highly controversial design choice was unveiled in 2023, the memorial was redesigned with community input.
The memorial was designed pro bono by award-winning artist Phillip K. Smith III. News Channel 3 anchor Peter Daut got a first look at the memorial's new design, speaking with Smith.
“The incredibly important community input we received during the Listening Sessions significantly impacted my concepts around the new Memorial design,” said Phillip K. Smith, III. “There is an immense community of support and love around those living with HIV/AIDS that is and has always been unique to Palm Springs. This new Memorial design would not have been possible without the community’s generous sharing of raw emotions, intimate memories of lost loved ones, and stories about the powerful network of caregivers here in Palm Springs. We hope that the community feels that its voice has been heard and supports the singular goal of this Memorial: ensuring the lives of those lost to HIV/AIDS are never forgotten.”
In addition to the physical structure, an accompanying online component of the Memorial will be created and accessed via a QR code that will be prominently displayed within the Memorial site. This online experience is being conceptualized now, and details will be shared as it progresses.
Officials hope to unveil the Palm Springs AIDS Memorial in the Downtown Park along with the online experience between Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.
Re-envisioned as a distinct space for remembrance and reflection, the new Memorial design, titled “The Well of Love”, focuses on three messages: Forever Remembered, Forever Loved, and Forever Celebrated. Merging tears of joy with tears of sorrow, each of these three messages are conceptualized across three different, vertically oriented, cast-glass and reflective “pools” of tears.
Tilted down at 7 degrees, each face reflects and collages the viewer, desert sky and surrounding landscape across the three-dimensional water-rippled surface. Additionally, twin entries and benches within a 20’ diameter space create a more significant and accessible space for the
Memorial within the Downtown Park.
Smith continued, “I am honored to have been part of this project from the beginning, through the
challenges, and now into the new design and approvals. We needed the community’s input to get to
where we are. And now we need the community’s generous financial support to make this Memorial
a reality. Today’s endorsement of the new design by the Palm Springs City Council, as well as the
City’s financial support, marks an impressive moment for this project that’s been in the making for
more than a decade.”
Renderings of the Memorial and a comprehensive description of the physical structure and the accompanying virtual site may be found at https://presentation.psaidsmemorial.org/.
The Task Force will now enter the final phase of fundraising. Given the expanded new design, the budget for the project increased to $1.2 million. Currently, about $700,000 is needed to complete the project.
The Task Force continues to welcome donations at all levels of support for this important project. Donations may be made at https://psaidsmemorial.org/communityleadership-donor-tiers/. To note, the Task Force has partnered with DAP Health to act solely as the fiscal processing agent for 501(c)(3) donations to the Memorial.
