Serves as both a directory to organizations that help artists and as a document of organizational activity by artists. National Association of Artists' Organizations [NAAO] document editor: Lane Relyea; directory editor: Penelope Boyer.

Organizing Artists presents a broad critical examination of artists' organizations and provides a no-nonsense resource guide for artists and arts organizations. The testimonies that begin this publication were solicited from the NAAO membership and are strong evidence of the field's vitality and honest self-evaluation. The essays that follow are endeavors at understanding that find the field both admirable and lacking. Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, co-founders of the Alliance for Cultural Democracy, maintain in their essay that the 80's were dominated by a single-minded drive towards institutionalism in the interests of survival. Glen Harper, editor of ArtPapers, provides a strong case for the field to be fully engaged as an oppositional force not an alternative one - clearly pushing for full participation in society in order to create change. Michelle Wallace, author of The Myth of the Black Superwoman, pinpoints in her essay the lack of clarity and commonality surrounding the discussion of multiculturalism. Her own admittedly reluctant support of multiculturalism is a clearer pathway to understanding its complexities than any amount of the disingenuous boosterism or angst-dripping guilt that has replaced the mainstream art world's previously unmasked rejection of anything but their own. Vince Leo's astonishing timetable of artist activism in the since 1900 closes this section of the publication. (Introduction)

[For the first edition of this directory, see The Directory of Artists' Organizations.
 For the third edition of this directory (published in 1992), see Organizing Artists: A
 Document and Directory of the National Association of Artists' Organizations.]

CONTENTS
Testimonials: 
     Lost and Found: Artists' Organizations in the 1980's by Don Adams and
     Arlene Goldbard.
     Multiculturalism and Oppositionality by Michele Wallace.
     Alternative Futures by Glen Harper.
     Nobody Remembers Everything: Timetable Project by Vince Leo.

Directory Listings:
     Art and artists - NAAO member organizations.
     Art and activism - Service and advocacy organizations.
     Arts and AIDS - National AIDS/HIV resource organizations.
     Art and projects - Artists' Projects Regional Initiative.
                               National Performance Network/primary sponsors.
     Arts and media - National Alliance of Media Art Centers.
     Art and government - Federal government.
                                    Regional and state arts agencies.
     Art and state - NAAO members listed by region and state.
     NAAO board of directors.

Index.
NAAO and National Campaign for Freedom of Expression [NCFE] information.

A directory to organizations that help artists and a document which outlines organizational activity by artists. Essays and testimonies about general trends in the arts community follow.