NAAO+ is a podcast dedicated to the oral history of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO). Artists’ organizations, also known as alternative art spaces, revolutionized the experience and presentation of  contemporary art in the US. NAAO was founded in 1982 to serve them and lasted about 20 years.

In this trailer we will take a short ride through some of NAAO’s advocacy efforts on behalf of artists and artists’ organizations. It can’t be emphasized enough how fast moving the far right attacks on art and artists were during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s coupled with the fumbling by the National Endowment for the Arts and its Chair, John Frohnmeyer. NAAO had to work quickly to get the word out, provide updated advocacy information and materials, and respond when demanded. This was the era of snail mail, telephone lines, pc’s and fax machines. Two reasons we and the field could move so quickly were our already established ties to advocacy on the left, both on a local and national level. The other was we knew our enemy —-Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC). We were well versed in his tactics against communities we counted ourselves as members and supporters of.

Here I cover board and staff advocacy activities, give an in-depth look at Nobody Remembers Everything by Vince Leo, a favorite publication of mine, and touch on the beginnings of the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression (NCFE), an organization that gave artists a strong uncompromising voice in DC and was co-founded by Joy Silverman. People mentioned in this podcast are Inverna Lockpez, Joy Silverman, Penny Boyer, Vince Leo, Lane Relyea,, Leonard Bernstein, Bella Lewitsky, David Wojnarowicz, and Cynthia Mayeda.

NAAO+ is a podcast dedicated to the oral history of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations (NAAO). Artists’ organizations, also known as alternative art spaces, revolutionized the experience and presentation of  contemporary art in the US. NAAO was founded in 1982 to serve them and lasted about 20 years.

In this trailer we will look at NAAO’s beginnings and its strong ties to the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. NAAO was a hybrid organization providing services and advocacy. The idea that you could be both for and against the government made NAAO a different fish altogether not only in its cooperative beginnings with the NEA but also because of the idea you could simply be for the cause of art and artists, not in service to a cause considered to be of higher critical purpose, or importance. Some on the left have a problem with art being for itself but perhaps this is a misguided way of looking at art. Art is a human creation that whether for itself or in service defines us as human — nothing greater or less — simply human. People mentioned in this trailer include Martha Wilson, Brian O’Doherty, Jim Melchert, Benny Andrews, Al Nodal, Renny Pritikin, Linda Goode Bryant, MK Wegmann, Claire Copley, Hudson, Inverna Lockpez, Helen Brunner, and Roberto Bedoya.

In this trailer we hear from Penelope Boyer, PhD about her life in New York City before NAAO.

She talks about her time performing in New York City with Anne Bogart, Tim Miller, Ain Gordon, Ping Chong, Stephen Petronio, and others during the 1980's in New York City.

Penny is a San Antonio, Texas-based queer/disabled/neurodivergent writer/activist/social-practice-artist/community-arts-advocate/queerator/arts administrator with over forty years' experience at local/regional/national/international levels.

She worked at NAAO during the start of the assault on the National Endowment for the Arts

(NEA) by the far right and its Congressional allies over NEA grants to exhibitions of art by Andre Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. Penny took over publication of The NAAO Bulletin which became a major engine of information and advocacy support for organizations and artists across the Unites States.