Our History
One of six nonprofit United States Regional Arts Organizations, Arts Midwest’s history spans more than 40 years.
It began with a merger
The United States Regional Arts Organizations were created by state arts leaders in the early 1970s to facilitate the exchange of artists across state lines.
In 1985, in the town of New Harmony, Indiana, two U.S. Regional Arts Organizations—the Great Lakes Arts Alliance and the Affiliated State Arts Agencies of the Upper Midwest—merged their teams, programs, and ideas to form Arts Midwest.
Since then, we have awarded more than 6,500 grants totaling nearly $65 million. Each year, we serve more than 700,000 individuals across more than 300 communities in the Midwest and beyond.
Judy Rapanos, Arts Midwest Founding Board Chair“In that very first meeting, we developed a vision of a regional organization that would come to represent the cultural vitality and diversity of the Midwest. We believed if we pooled our resources—human and financial—we could create an organization whose future would be limited only by the creativity and determination of its leadership and the region it would serve.”
Past Programs
Arts Midwest’s 40 year history spans geographic and cultural borders, artistic disciplines, and purpose. Learn more about some of the ways in which we have supported creativity across the Midwest.
If you’d like more information on our history, please contact our team.
From 2009 to 2010, we partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts and our nine partner state arts agencies to distribute grants using federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
From 2023 to 2026, we collaborated with the National Endowment for the Arts and the other U.S. Regional Arts Organizations to deliver ArtsHERE, a grant and peer learning opportunity designed to help grantees sustain meaningful community engagement and increase arts participation for underserved groups/communities.
From 1999 to 2019, we trained arts leaders in building sustainable business models and deepening community engagement through ArtsLab. The program was supported by the McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation, Mardag Foundation, and F.R. Bigelow Foundation.
From 2009 to 2013, we produced Arts Learning Xchange, a four-year initiative designed to increase public arts attendance by developing and sharing resources for arts organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. This program was funded by The Wallace Foundation in collaboration with the Saint Paul and Minnesota Foundation.
From 1988 to 2021, we hosted the Arts Midwest Conference, a national gathering for the Midwest performing arts industry focused on booking, education, and presenting. The Conference was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Lilly Endowment, and many sponsors.
In 1990, we launched the Arts Midwest Jazz Masters award, recognizing jazz performers, mentors, and teachers for lifetime excellence. We later partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts to produce their NEA Jazz Masters Live program.
From 2009 to 2015, we toured 15 performing arts ensembles from Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Malaysia, and the U.S. Muslim community to 25 American cities to counteract anti-Muslim rhetoric. This initiative was supported by the Building Bridges Program of the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, Association of Performing Arts Professionals, and MetLife Foundation.
From 2020 to 2021, we partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts and our nine partner state arts agencies to distribute grants using federal funds from the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan Act.
From 2020-2022, we acted as a fiscal agent in partnership with the City of Minneapolis to provide creative healing and support grants to mobilize the unique and specialized skills of artists to respond to community needs and engage with and expand the impact of community healing and support.
From 2020 to 2022, we collaborated with the Bush Foundation to deliver the Community Creativity Cohort. Through this partnership, we supported 40 nonprofit organizations across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and the Native Nations within that geography through training, gatherings, and grants.
From 2014 to 2022, we worked with organizations and communities to integrate creative expression, arts, and culture into everyday life through Creating Connection. Developed in partnership with Metropolitan Group and supported by funders such as the Barr Foundation, Michigan Arts and Culture Council, Minnesota State Arts Board, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, this program trained more than 350 arts leaders in creating values-based messaging and programs.
In 1991, we launched the Cultural Development Fund, which provided flexible grants to organizations rooted in African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Native communities.
From 2024 to 2025, we partnered with the six U.S. Regional Arts Organizations and The Wallace Foundation on Cultural Sustainability, a pilot program supporting small arts and culture organizations rooted in communities of color.
From 2016 to 2021, we toured artists from Finland and Sweden to communities in the Midwest, for week-long stays featuring public performances and educational activities. Produced by Arts Midwest with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, the Nordic Culture Fund, We Energies Foundation, Swedish Council of America, and through American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Thord-Gray Memorial Fund.
From 2009 to 2021, we provided scholarships through the Future Leaders Fund, enabling emerging arts administrators to gain hands-on industry experience at events like the Arts Midwest Conference and via peer learning cohorts. Over its operation, we awarded more than 50 scholarships.
From 1989 to 2003, we operated the Minority Arts Administration Fellowship Program. Initially supported by the Ford Foundation, with additional support from the MacArthur, Knight, and Jerome Foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The program sought to increase representation of people of color in senior-level arts management roles by supporting internships, mentoring, and networking.
In 2016, we toured Native American Song and Dance: Kevin Locke, Gene Tagaban, and Doug Good Feather through Heilongjiang Province in northeastern China. The artists led workshops and performances for audiences of all ages, creating space for cross-cultural exchange through shared themes and traditions in Indigenous and Chinese cultures.
From 2004 to 2005, we partnered with the National Endowment for the Arts to deliver Operation Homecoming, a writing initiative that brought acclaimed authors to military bases in the U.S. and abroad to lead workshops for service members. The program also invited troops, veterans, and military families to share their own stories of service, resulting in more than 12,000 pages of submissions. A selection of these writings was published in an anthology curated by Andrew Carroll, with all submissions archived by the Library of Congress.
From 2002 to 2005, we led the State Arts Partnerships for Cultural Participation (START) program in collaboration with The Wallace Foundation. Working with more than 100 leaders across 13 states and researchers from the Hauser Center and Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, we examined the role of public sector arts agencies. This work culminated in the publication of Creating Public Value through State Arts Agencies in 2005.
Our first grantmaking program, the Touring Fund, operated from 1985 to 2020, providing grants for organizations to present performing artists from outside their communities. This program was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and Land O’Lakes.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we partnered with the U.S. Regional Arts Organizations, the Mellon Foundation, and an anonymous donor to establish the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund, providing flexible funding to under-resourced arts and culture organizations.
We have a long history of bringing Midwestern artists and artworks to national and international audiences. Our exhibitions spanned multiple genres and mediums and included:
- Identity and the American Landscape, which presented the photography of Wing Young Huie in 14 cities across China, exploring themes of immigration, identity, and home.
- Illusions of Eden: Visions of the American Heartland, which showcased Midwestern creativity in Central Europe.
- Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison, a comprehensive retrospective that toured the work of this influential 20th-century Ojibwe artist to five U.S. communities.
- Russel Wright: Living with Good Design, a retrospective of America’s first celebrity designer which traveled to five American cities
- The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers from 21st-Century America, an exhibition of quilts by contemporary American artists that toured through China from 2012-2014. The exhibition was jointly developed and managed by Arts Midwest and South Arts.
- The Somali Documentary Project, which chronicled the Somali diaspora and toured nationally and internationally.
- Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson, which explored the artist’s memory of her Columbus, Ohio, neighborhood and celebrated Black heritage.
From 2019 to 2024, we partnered with six Midwest communities to create artist residency experiences that encouraged the exchange of voices, cultures, and ideas. Supported by the Mellon Foundation, this initiative included partnerships with the Indiana Arts Commission, Iowa Arts Council, North Dakota Council on the Arts, and South Dakota Arts Council.
From 2003 to 2025, we toured more than 40 global artists and ensembles to over 100 communities across the Midwest and the U.S. Through artist residencies supported by 3M, the Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, The Hearst Foundations, The Japan Foundation, BNSF Railway, and others, we fostered cross-cultural exchange, conversation, and hands-on artistic engagement.