ABOUT NATIONAL QUEER ARTS FESTIVAL
The National Queer Arts Festival is an annual multidisciplinary Festival held May through July throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Each year we commission over twenty performances, visual arts exhibitions, and interdisciplinary showcases and in the process of producing work we support hundreds of artists, technical and production crews.
Since 1998, NQAF has presented more than 800 different events featuring over 1000 LGBTQ+ artists including Bill T. Jones, Alice Walker, Robert Rauschenberg, Meredith Monk, Adrienne Rich, Marga Gomez, Justin Chin, Thom Gunn, Cherrie Moraga and Dorothy Allison. NQAF is the largest queer arts festival in North America.
2020 FESTIVAL
Due to Covid-19 we canceled the 2020 National Queer Arts Festival. However, we continue to support the artists and organizations who were slated to be in the festival by creating new ways to produce their work and will publish those events on this landing page. We are inspired by the passion and creativity of artists, staff, and our Bay Area arts community at large.
Here are actions you can take to support and be connected to our work.
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- 90% of the funds raised through festival tickets go directly into the pockets of artists, producers, and other small arts organizations.
- A huge part of our funding is directly tied to tourism dollars through the hotel tax, in the coming year we will need to rely more heavily on the generosity of individual supporters like you to allow us to continue our work!