"The Estate Project for Artists with AIDS was the first national organization to address the protection of America's cultural heritage during the AIDS crisis. It was first formed in 1991 as a temporary project of Alliance for Arts, New York, to survey the needs of artists with AIDS in planning their estates, and to analyze options for documenting, storing, and conserving their work. The Estate Project grew into its own organization to provide information, counseling, advocacy, and funding, and preserve the cultural impact of AIDS on the arts.

In 1998, Patrick Moore, then the director of the Estate Project, joined with Randall Bourscheidt, then the president of Alliance for the Arts to produce "The Geldzahler Portfolio," to raise funds for the organization and to honor one of the Estate Project's earliest supporters, Henry Geldzahler (1935-1994).

Geldzahler, a curator and critic, was among the first champions of Pop Art, in addition to other emerging contemporary movements. He served as curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and later became the first full-time Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Geldzahler also helped found and direct the National Endowment for the Arts program of artists's grants.

In addition to Bourgeois, the other participating artists are Francesco Clemente, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, David Salle, and Frank Stella. Included in the portfolio is the 1964 film "Henry Geldzahler" by Andy Warhol. All of the artists who contributed to "The Geldzahler Portfolio" are mentioned in Geldzahler's 1994 anthology of essays and interviews, "Making It New."

The Advisory Committee for the portfolio was David Kiehl, of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Lowery Stokes Sims, then of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Deborah Wye, of the Museum of Modern Art." (Deborah Wye, Louise Bourgeois: The Complete Prints & Books, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018).