About Us
Raising funds to ensure excellence in the arts and build a vibrant cultural community for everyone.
Our mission statement above says it best - ArtsMemphis is an arts fundraising organization dedicated to supporting and enhancing the region's cultural community. Founded 45 years ago by a group of Memphians who wanted to ensure that vibrant and diverse local arts offerings would be sustained, ArtsMemphis is now one of the largest United Arts Funds in the entire country.
At its core, the organization is charged with providing support to the cultural community through grants and services that enable the organizations to operate and flourish long term. In the current fiscal year, ArtsMemphis will raise approximately $2.5 million to support the arts and administer more than 200 grants. Through the strength of our endowment income and annual contributions from ArtsMemphis’s Board of Directors, more than 95% of these funds will be distributed to support the cultural community.
Memphis has strong and diverse arts organizations anchored by nationally and regionally recognized institutions in music/symphony, dance, theatre, opera and the visual arts. The vibrancy and authenticity of the arts, their cultural capital and contribution to economic development is a source of competitive advantage for Memphis and is an amenity and benefit to the entire region that cannot be undervalued. The arts strengthen communities and help cities attract the young, upwardly mobile knowledge-based workers of the future. It is these “intangibles”, that going forward will make Memphis a “place of choice”.
