At the time, SOHO20 also placed greater emphasis on exhibitions that exposed relevant social and political issues. In 1985, "Private Gone Public" attempted to reveal how artists "formulate a private view of life, environment, the world, into a comprehensible visual symbology." The exhibition included works by May Stevens, Howardena Pindell, Sue Coe, Erika Rothenberg, Nancy Spero, and Bonnie Lucas—"six 'gut issue' artists," as described by Grace Glueck in "The New York Times". In 1989, "South African Mail: Messages from Inside" consisted of more than 400 works by 200 artists from South Africa, conceived as a form of resistance against apartheid. The exhibition was curated by Janet Goldner with funding from the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid. An exhibition in 1990, curated by Faith Ringgold, was made as a tribute to the civil rights workers killed in Mississippi in 1964, and featured works by six African-American women artists, including Beverly Buchanan, Joyce J. Scott, and Clarissa Sligh. SOHO20 was also among the many arts organizations that responded to concerns over censorship and attempts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts in 1989, which followed the widely publicized controversies around exhibitions of works by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe. "Blacklisted/Whitewashed/Red Handed" (1990) addressed issues of censorship, funding restrictions, and 1st Amendment rights through the works of SOHO20 artists and artist-interns from Washington Irving High School. Also in 1990, SOHO20 partnered with the Organization of Pan Asian American Women to present an art auction of works by Asian artists to benefit the New York Asian Women's Center (now known as Womankind), which serves the survivors of human trafficking, sexual and domestic violence, and later-in-life abuse. In 1994, SOHO20 hosted an invitational exhibition called "Effect or Infect: Art and Ecology", which addressed the state of world ecology.