Toots Zynsky discusses an NEA grant awarded to NYEGW. Oral history interview with Toots Zynsky, March 22, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 05:11.

Toots Zynsky: Here was everyone else going back out to the woods and to beautiful places, you know—moving back to the land and, you know, being out in the mountains or by the ocean or it was—a subculture, kind of culture. And then Richard Yelle decided that he should build a studio in New York, but it was the first cousin or [laughs] brother or sister of Clayworks, which was upstairs, and then Glassworks was downstairs on Great Jones Street. And I was introduced to it because our friend Jun Kaneko was at Clayworks as a resident artist for several months and we would come down and visit Jun and that’s how I met the people at Glassworks. That was like in ‘78, ‘79. And then we wound up moving to New York because my first husband was offered a great job in New York and so [laughs] we moved to New York—me [laughs] very reluctantly. And, you know, after we get settled in and got my son settled in school and I was helping my husband with certain—jobs. I really wanted to get back to my work again so, you know, I went down to the workshop and Joe Upham was the director then and Richard Yelle was—he was a presence that came in and out, but Richard had thought it would be a great thing to start a place in Manhattan. Everyone’s like, ‘What’s he doing?’ You know, ‘Why isn’t he, like, out in the hills somewhere?’ And it was basically not so much an artist-in-residence program but a visiting artist program where the idea was that artists—and part of the reason he wanted to be in New York—that artists working in other mediums could come and, like, try it and see what they could do with it. I mean, people like Thomas Bang, Chris [Christopher] Wilmarth, I mean the list was long, and Dennis Oppenheim. Rauschenberg, whose studio was right across the street, did those amazing full size tires, that—glass tires, cast glass tires. So there were a lot of really interesting artists coming and going and they were actively seeking, bringing them in. And then at the time that I arrived, Joe said, ‘Oh well, we want—we need an assistant director. You want to [laughs] be the assistant director?’ And I went, ‘I don’t know, I suppose I could do something about that.’ And, ‘Oh and there’s some grants to write. We need to write an NEA grant so you can do that, cause you helped write some grants from Pilchuck [Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington], right?’ And I went, ‘Yeah, I helped write some grants. I guess I could try it.’ So we got the grant, but then Ronald Reagan canceled them all because that was just the end of ‘80 and the week that he was—after he was inaugurated, slashed with the NEA, and we got a letter that basically made null and void—or tried to make null and void—the first letter they’d sent us which said, ‘Yes, we’re giving you this grant.’ And I walked in the studio, and I thought someone had died. Everyone was like, with their heads down. Half the people were crying. Because our lease was up in June and we had, based on being given that grant, you know, put a big chunk of what money we had left to moving to a new space. And it was like ruin, you know, and I was so angry. I got on the phone with the NEA and I said, ‘Blah, blah, blah, you tell Ronald Reagan that he can’t do this. This is by law breach of promise. I have two letters and one is a breach of promise. One’s a promise, and one’s a breach of promise. So you tell him that he can’t do this and all I want to hear from you guys is when we’re going to get that money.’ And—the guy’s name was Michael. I can’t remember his last name, nice guy, and he said—and I said, ‘And believe me, every arts group is going to band together and get a band of lawyers and come to D.C. and make a mess out of this.’ And he’s like, ‘Okay, Toots, I’ll see what I can do.’ you know. And I have the phone and I was shaking. I mean, I didn’t know a lawyer to save my own rear end [laughs], let alone, you know, the world of art, but we did get the money. And in the meantime, we had to find some other money, and I hate asking people for money. So I did sort of, because it was a do-or-die situation, called a friend’s parents and asked if they would loan us the money, and five days later we get a check for twice the amount of money that we had asked for as the loan and it said, ‘This is a gift. We don’t think that young people doing such a good thing should have a big loan hanging over their head.’ So that plus getting the NEA sort of got us through. And then we moved to Mulberry Street [laughs] which was another set of adventures.