Bestowing on the arts their importance is, of necessity, a community effort, and in 1966 the elected representatives of our statewide community established the Idaho Commission on the Arts to stimulate and encourage throughout the state the study and presentation of the arts, and public interest and participation therein...and to encourage and assist freedom of artistic expression essential to the well-being of the arts. Commissioners, each appointed with regional considerations by the governor, began setting overall policies. The first state appropriation was made the following year, and three years later the Commission received its first grant in support of arts programs from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In 1970, the Commission held the first Governor's Conference on the Arts and initiated the first Governor's Awards in the Arts, among the earliest such initiatives in the nation. Over the next ten years, the Commission moved to the Alexander House on State Street in Boise, began an Artists in the Schools program, hired a full-time staff, and began work on a long-range plan developing goals, objectives, and strategies. In the 1980s, the first grants to individual artists were awarded. By the mid-1980s, the legislature was making General Fund appropriations for Commission programs, and a second long-range plan was underway. The 1990s marked noteworthy funding for arts organizations, underserved communities, and youth at risk. After twenty-three years at the Alexander House, in fall 2000 the Commission moved to renovated quarters at the Warden's House in the Old Penitentiary Historic District. Moreover, in 2003, after being under the Secretary of State for thirty-seven years, the agency was moved under the Office of the Governor. In 2001 and again in 2003 the Commission sponsored a conference, “Arts Matter!” that brought together artists, arts administrators, educators, civic leaders, elected officials, and board members from across the state. In 2005, it amplified that success by hosting the National Association of State Arts Agencies annual meeting that brought 385 arts administrators to Boise. Dana Gioia, the chair of the NEA, poet Robert Haas, and Senator Larry Craig, were among the distinguished speakers at that event. In the next decade, the Commission looks forward to the implementation of a public art initiative that will support public art within the state, partnerships with other agencies and arts organizations, creation of a new long-range plan, and continued work on ways to sustain and expand understanding and participation in the arts by all Idahoans.

Arts administration is no less a community effort than is support of the arts. At the Commission a professional staff provides resources, information, and technical assistance to artists and to arts and cultural organizations in every corner of our state. In addition, the Commission administers grants, fellowships, and residencies for Idaho artists, schools, traditional artists, and arts organizations; mails a statewide arts newsletter; and maintains an informative Web site. The staff furnishes the commissioners with information about arts issues and grant applications, and they implement Commission policies; the commissioners, in turn, approve panel recommendations concerning all grants and awards.


Life is short, art is long.--Hippocrates