100 Years of ArtsWave
It’s impossible to separate the quality and variety of arts that we enjoy today from generations of community support through ArtsWave.
Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts, now known as ArtsWave, is founded with a challenge grant to the community by Anna Sinton and Charles Phelps Taft, in order to secure the future of the region’s arts.
Anna Sinton Taft bequeaths the family home and art collection to the Institute (ArtsWave), creating the Taft Museum of Art.
Cincinnati Institute of Fine Arts launches the Fine Arts Fund, the country’s first community arts campaign to provide regular support to four arts organizations: Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Cincinnati Art Museum, Taft Museum of Art and Cincinnati Opera.
The Fine Arts Fund runs the first workplace giving campaign for the arts in the nation at GE Aviation and reaches $1 million for the first time.
With increased corporate support, the Fine Arts Fund expands to include four more arts organizations: Cincinnati Ballet, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and May Festival. The Fund also begins offering project grants to smaller arts organizations.
The Fine Arts Fund commissions The Arts Ripple Effect. This groundbreaking research on how to build community support for the arts draws national attention and reveals that the public values the arts for their ability to create economic vibrancy and social connectivity.
The Fine Arts Fund is reimagined as ArtsWave, marking a shift from merely supporting the needs of arts organizations to advancing their impact across the region. With a new name, mission and vision, ArtsWave broadens its focus on how the arts strengthen the community, setting the stage for the shift to competitive, impact-based grantmaking and support for a growing range of organizations.
ArtsWave unveils its 10-year community transformation plan, the Blueprint for Collective Action for the Arts. The Blueprint aims to leverage the power of the arts to help create a more vibrant economy and more connected community.
ArtsWave Guide (now Cincy A&E) launches, offering the Cincinnati region’s most comprehensive arts events calendar, leading the way to the first-of-its-kind ArtsWave App in 2024.
ArtsWave expands its funding pool, providing operating support for 40 organizations and awarding 150+ grants in total.
ArtsWave introduces Flow, An African American Arts Experience, which brings leading Black performers and artists to the Cincinnati region. ArtsWave also launches the Circle Grant program specifically for Black-led organizations.
ArtsWave pivots to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shutdown of much of the arts sector with emergency relief funds, accelerated grants, innovation funds, loans and other forms of assistance to both arts organizations and individual artists. ArtsWave amasses $13 million, including an Arts Vibrancy Recovery Fund and public challenge to provide a path to restarting the arts.
ArtsWave introduces “Lifting As We Learn”, a diversity, equity, inclusion and access plan with key performance indicators for ArtsWave and the arts sector.
The 2024 Economic Impact of Arts & Culture report, commissioned by ArtsWave and produced by the Center for Research & Data at the Cincinnati Regional Chamber, reveals the powerful economic engine that arts and culture represent in our region. This comprehensive study examines the financial contributions of over 70 arts organizations across the Cincinnati region, demonstrating that the arts sector is not merely a cultural asset but a significant economic driver generating $1.6 billion in total economic impact from 2019-2022.
ArtsWave launches the ArtsWave App, creating a new way to discover the Cincinnati region’s vibrant arts and entertainment scene. Bringing arts giving and going together into one place, the App helps people find more to do, explore something new and connect with the breadth of arts experiences happening around them.
Nearly 100 years after 3,700 citizens came together to secure the future of Cincinnati’s arts, ArtsWave establishes a new generation of “ArtsWave Visionaries.” Through investments in the ArtsWave 100 Endowment, these supporters are helping ensure ArtsWave can continue funding the arts and fueling community for generations to come, carrying the spirit of the original 1927 Visionaries into ArtsWave’s second century.
ArtsWave celebrates 100 years of fueling the Cincinnati region’s arts and looks ahead to its second century, building on a century of community support to create an even more vibrant and connected region through the arts.