NAAO+ An Oral History of the National Association of Artists’ Organizations

The National Association of Artists' Organizations (NAAO) was founded in 1982 and lasted nearly 20 years. NAAO was a point of connection for a vibrant group of people driven to present new art in places big and small across the United States. Here you will find unvarnished accounts of the explosion of new art in the closing decades of the last century. Artists’ organizations, also known as alternative art spaces, revolutionized the experience and presentation of contemporary art in the US. The stories you’ll hear reveal what happens when artists and their supporters work together to present art that challenges the status quo. And how NAAO and its members fought against the far right’s efforts to shutter the National Endowment for the Arts during the Bush no.1 and Clinton administrations. Those days echo loudly today. We feel unsafe about our future as people who care about each other, who understand that creativity is a must in a free society, and who understand history is made by people and the choices we make. An appallingly primary connection between then and now are how the far right successfully targets groups to create fear and hate. How it exploits individual preferences, circumstances, and discomforts to dampen and silence what should be unmitigated and loud outrage over their war against people of color, immigrants, artists, students, women, and free expression. No answers are guaranteed here, but the gifts of sharing history firsthand— the oldest method known to humanity of learning from our past while we build our future, are abundantly available here. As Edmund White put it, “your deepest sense of duty and obligation is to history and to the people you knew and loved.” Amen to that. People whose lives intersected with NAAO are Fred Wilson, Penny Boyer, Inverna Lockpez, John Fleck, Karen Finley, Tim Miller, Sherman Fleming, Holly Hughes, Pat Oleszko, Jock Reynolds, C. Carr, Victoria Reis, Robert Atkins, Isaac Butler, Jeff Hoone, Hudson, Loris Bradley, Martha Wilson,Holly Block, Roberto Bedoya, Helen Brunner, Mel Chin, Ed Cardoni, Susan Wyatt,  Alice Lovelace, Amalia Mesa Baines, Mary Dorman, Tomas Ybarra Fausta, Joy Silverman, Michael Peranteau, Guillermo Gomez Pena, Anne Focke, Ted Berger, Renny Pritikin, Charlotte Cohen, David Avalos, Claire Copley. and many more. All of them have stories to tell, and for those who have passed, we will have episodes of remembrance. This podcast has as its patron saints the glorious Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and StudsTerkel.