N.A.M.E. Gallery

N.A.M.E. Gallery (1973—1997) was an American independent non-profit contemporary art gallery and film studio in Chicago, Illinois. It's regarded as one of the nation's first "artist-run" spaces that emerged in the early 1970s, fueled by grants from a recently-established National Endowment For The Arts. N.A.M.E. was launched by a group of recent SAIC graduates, initially located at the corner of Lake and Wells. Despite a prominent and almost "legendary" status, the Gallery's groundbreaking work has scarcely been preserved and researched. A small collection of eight "scrapbooks" on two microfilm reels, covering the first six years of N.A.M.E. (1973–79; borrowed for microfilming from photographer and artist Krystin Grenon in 1979) is currently held at Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.