The National Association of Artists’ Organizations

a brief history

The National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO), a Washington DC non-profit arts service organization, was established in 1982 and lasted nearly twenty years. NAAO’s first members were the founders and direct descendants of alternative art spaces that formed in the 60’s and 70's across the country.  NAAO members held a deep belief in artists helping artists, and were created in direct opposition to the stultifying conservatism of mainstream art institutions. Concretizing the New Left's radical shift to individual freedom that ignited activism in artists, people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ communities, artists’ organizations were determined to take action and create change in the art world and beyond.

some background According to Martha Wilson, artist and co-founder of Franklin Furnace (New York), bereft of their scrappy pasts of receiving free-to-cheap rents, and without Reagan-axed CETA, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, a widely beneficial government program subsidizing employment costs, the future of artists’ organizations relied on convincing foundation and government funders that this fertile new field offered more bang for their buck.

Brian O’Doherty, the second director of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Arts Program (1969 to 1976), related, “I managed to do a few things for the visual arts, including getting artists to develop their own non-profits so they could get a share of the organizational pie.” From their start, artists’ organizations enjoyed a supportive relationship with the NEA Visual Arts Program in particular. Jim Melchert, a Bay Area conceptual artist and the Visual Art’s third Director, further solidified the program’s support by providing funds for the establishment of NAAO. Melchert, had reviewed artists’ organizations applications as a panelist before coming on board as Director, he remembered, “The category was exciting. Artists across the country had decided to take matters into their own hands and create exhibition spaces of their own. The museums had yet to recognize their new modes of art making such as video, performance, sound art, etc. Women and minority groups were also determined to get exposure with galleries of their own. The first audiences for new music were those the alternative spaces made room for.”

In search of greater community NAAO’s founding was preceded by two self organized conferences. The first in 1978, Conference on Alternative Spaces was hosted by LAICA (Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art). It was followed by one hosted by The Contemporary Arts Center of New Orleans. Agreement emerged between the field and the NEA that a service organization tailored to the unique needs of art spaces was a good idea for the future survival of these groundbreaking groups. 

The steering committee that drafted the plan for the NAAO were executive directors Lyn Blumenthal of Video Data Bank (Chicago, Illinois), Joseph Celli of Real Art Ways (Hartford, Connecticut), Al Nodal of Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, D.C.), Renny Pritikin of New Langton Arts (San Francisco, California), and MK Wegmann of Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, Lousiana). Some two hundred representatives voted NAAO into existence during a hot humid summer week in DC. Pritikin wrote, “It was so moving that our little underfunded movement had emerged united and powerful and national and broadly representative.” 

the phrase artists’ organizations NAAO was never intended to be a machine of standardization or accreditation, that would be anathema. Claire Copley, NAAO's first Executive Director, explained that the term, “artists’ organizations,” was chosen for its inclusivity. NAAO founders relied on new members to be “self selecting” – joining because they saw their values and concerns reflected in NAAO’s aims and members. Full voting membership criteria stated that:

• Full Member Organizations must demonstrate a commitment and responsibility to contemporary artists, ideas and forms, and to equal representation.

• Artists must maintain a central policy and decision-making role in Full Member Organizations

• Full Member Organizations guarantee artists full control of the presentation of their work and are committed to paying equitable artists' fees for presenting and exhibiting their work.

• Full Member Organizations are committed to paying equitable artists' fees.

• Support/Presentation of an artists work in Full Member Organizations has no relationship to restricted membership

services to the field NAAO grew into a provider of services that matched its members well. Betti-Sue Hertz, NAAO board member, art curator, historian, and director of Columbia University’s Wallach Art Gallery, wrote, “It is no wonder that through the bonds formed across communities of artists that we learned how our local context was a node in a complex web of practices and ideas. In the pre-internet era, NAAO was an engine of connectivity for this growing sector. Looking back we can see the impact of these years—on art making and its reception, especially in the realms of public art, social practice and radical performance art. We became aware of other people’s issues, and the rights that needed defending in different socio-geographical regions—border arts activism, feminist  and LGBTQ+ art and politics, racial equity and inclusion, the environment and progressive representational politics—all had a place at the table. We could rely on NAAO to foster dialogue and fight against repressive political policies. That so many members of NAAO are still active in the art field is a testament to the commitment of its members, and its influence on art and culture. It is no wonder that many who were in leadership roles within NAAO, are now at the helm of major arts institutions across the US as well as independent and experimental arts organizations.” Hertz continues, “Although much of NAAO’s official archive is lost, we can still build a compilation of documents by collecting into one place the notices, posters, videos, photographs, etc. from our personal and institutional archives. This will enable the reconstruction of NAAO’s history. I would love to see a documentary about NAAO featuring documentation, interviews, retrospection and analysis. It’s an appropriate form to capture its past and communicate its unique place in the history of art.”

publications + conferences NAAO’s most visible services were its publications and conferences. The NAAO Bulletin and Flashes —newsletters and advocacy alerts—were integral to NAAO’s leading role in fighting far-right attacks on the NEA, artists and arts organizations. NAAO published periodic directories of artists’ organizations that included NAAO members and non-members, state and local arts agencies as well as other art and non-art service organizations. Its 1992 directory, Organizing Artists: A Document and Directory of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations was made possible by Cynthia Mayeda then Chair of the Dayton Hudson Foundation, and includes Vince Leo’s Nobody Remembers Everything, an extraordinary timetable project of freedom of expression events in the US centering NAAO’s activism; essays by Michelle Wallace and David Trend; testimonies from Edmond Cardoni, Dorit Cypis, Allen Frame, Robert Lee, and Sylvia Orozco; and art by Anthony Aziz, Ming Fay, Gary Stolberg, and Ronald Gonzalez.

Michael Peranteau, former director of DiverseWorks Artspace in Houston and NAAO board member said, "For artist-run organizations outside of the art capitals like New York and Los Angeles, NAAO was a much-needed lifeline and inspirational force. The long-term impact of NAAO cannot be overstated. Its strength was its ability to address relevant topics and connect artists. When the AIDS global epidemic hit in the 1980's many artists’ organizations presented work about AIDS and HIV.  Roberto Bedoya and I presented how art and AIDS advocacy overlapped at the [1989 NAAO Conference in Minneapolis].”

NAAO conferences were national and regional, comprise its most cherished contributions to the field, and were built upon NAAO’s core principles of representation and diversity. NAAO reflected the underfunded nature of its constituency but through a combination of collaboration, keeping conference, hotel and travel prices low, travel subsidies, a sliding scale membership and unparalleled offerings in the forms of panels, visual art, new music, and performance art presentations, caucuses and meetings, and exuberant activities and parties, people showed up. From 1983 through 2000 the following organizations hosted national conferences in collaboration with NAAO staff and board: NAME Gallery, ARC, and Artemisia Gallery of Chicago, Illinois (1983) DiverseWorks and Houston Coalition of the Visual Arts of Houston, Texas (1985); Hallwalls and C.E.P.A. of Buffalo, New York (1986); LACE of Los Angeles, California (1988); Intermedia Arts of Minneapolis, Minnesota (1989); Washington Project of the Arts of DC (1991); Mexic-Arte of Austin, Texas (1992); and a coalition of New York City artists’ organizations (2000).

advocacy NAAO led the nation in the culture wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s by responding rapidly to attacks against artists, freedom of expression, and government funding for the arts. These attacks were initiated by the far-right and strengthened by its Congressional allies. At first they centered on works by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe but rapidly grew to include artists and organizations within NAAO’s sphere. The inclusion of a "decency clause,” a compromise of an obscenity amendment to NEA legislation authored by Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), led NAAO to become a co-plaintiff in the NEA v. Finley case, and to join artists Karen Finley, John Fleck, Holly Hughes, and Tim Miller in challenging its constitutionality. The case was won at every level except the Supreme Court when in 1998 in an 8 - 1 decision, it was lost. Justice David Souter cast the sole dissenting vote. Soon after NAAO ended.

Fred Wilson, a NAAO board member, had said during a 1990 board discussion that it was essential to “plan for the future. Be ready to exist without NEA funds.” It would not work out that way. A combination of economics and exhaustion was responsible. The main strength and weakness of NAAO was that it was never for itself. People of great humor were drawn to its sometimes rambunctious and always deep sense of purpose. 

dreaming together David Avalos of San Diego, a NAAO board member, wrote in an email that NAAO offered the chance of, “Being in the company of folks who got a kick out of working collectively to oppose institutional and governmental efforts to dehumanize and criminalize our freedom to imagine other ways of knowing and loving each other through the arts, to imagine other forms of beauty as monstrous and marvelous as every-day miracles, to imagine a transformational aesthetics linked with real world political, economic, social, cultural and environmental issues.” 

staff NAAO has many stories to tell. It is an honor to provide them here, and to give recognition to some of the people who worked to make it a vital organization. Here is a listing of staff culled from publications currently available on this website in chronological order: Claire Copley, Executive Director; Robin Drummond, Program Officer; Charlotte Murphy, Office Coordinator and Executive Director; Rebecca Krafft, NAAO Bulletin Editor; Susan Born Ozment, Office Coordinator; Dan Marx, Intern; Nina Musgrove, Intern; Jane Bedula, NAAO Bulletin Editor; Jan Ellenstein, Conference Coordinator; Penny Boyer, Assistant Director, Publications Editor, Associate Director; Mary Drayton-Hill, Development Officer; Bettina Bell, Intern; Chris Westberg, Contributing Editor and Membership Coordinator; Adele Biancarelli, Bookkeeper; Macarena de la Piedra, Intern; Galen Conway Nelson, Intern; Victoria Reis, Administrative Assistant and Program Director; Jennifer Wood, Administrative Assistant; Helen Brunner, Executive Director; and Roberta Bedoya, Executive Director

more to come, charlotte murphy