The Alliance for the Arts formed the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS in 1991 as a temporary project, but it quickly grew into a permanent organization with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami under the leadership of the Project Director, Patrick Moore. The Estate Project sought to provide guidance and assistance for artists living with AIDS in protecting their work, creating an archive of America’s cultural heritage during the AIDS crisis and of the crisis itself.
The Project primarily focused on information, counseling, advocacy, and funding programs. It surveyed the needs of artists with AIDS in planning their estates, documenting, storing, and conserving their work in the Project’s archival facilities, and served as a resource on AIDS and as facilitator and catalyst for bringing AIDS and arts groups together. As its work grew, the project began to seek grants and produce exhibitions, as well as deliver legal services and counseling. The Project was dedicated to making work accessible to the public and posterity, while giving artists control of their legacies, helping them to plan their estates as an act of self-respect and self-empowerment in the face of death, not a capitulation to death.