Mid-America Arts Alliance Celebrates 30 Years of Creating Access to the Arts

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JUNE 11, 2003

Contact: Sarah McGreer
(816) 421-1388 Ext.230

Mid-America Arts Alliance Celebrates 30 Years of Creating Access to the Arts

Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA), the first regional, multi-state arts agency in the U.S. turns 30 this year, and it will celebrate this significant milestone at its semi-annual board of directors’ meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, June 20–21. Mid-America Arts Alliance will take this special opportunity to celebrate the memories and stories of its long history of making high-quality arts experiences available to underserved communities throughout the country.

Comprising a six-state region of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, Mid-America Arts Alliance delivers regional, multi-regional, national, and international programs to over 2 million people annually. With an emphasis on access and affordability, M-AAA has remained committed to its mission of transforming lives and building communities by uniting people through the power of art for 30 years.

That commitment to its mission is evident in the artistic collaborations that make M-AAA distinctive.

Mary Kennedy McCabe, Executive Director of M-AAA, explained, “Mid-America Arts Alliance is a unique collaboration among state arts agencies, federal agencies like the National Endowment for the Arts, private donors, artists, museums, and performing arts presenters. By working together, we are able to deliver some of the best visual and performing arts work to places as large as New York City and as small as Montezuma, Kansas. It’s a testament to the vision of our founders and to the hard work of our organization and partners.”

Mid-America Arts Alliance will also celebrate the anniversary this month with a history and timeline on its Web site, www.maaa.org.

SERVING THE UNDERSERVED: ORGANIZING THE FIRST REGIONAL ARTS ORGANIZATION
In the early 1970s, the Mid-America region was geographically isolated and culturally underserved. Most performing and visual arts touring activity was focused on the East and West Coasts, and major dance, music, and theatre companies were rarely, if ever, performing in the Midwest. To combat this issue, a group of civic leaders from four Midwest states came together in 1972 to envision an organization that ensured access to arts of excellence for people in the Mid-America region.

Their goal was to make the arts more accessible and affordable to regional audiences. The group leaders, which included Woody Varner, the then newly appointed President of the University of Nebraska, imagined consolidating the cultural and financial resources of multiple states in order to increase the availability and variety of cultural programming.

Out of their initial collaboration, Mid-America Arts Alliance emerged in 1973 as the first regional arts organization in the country. With initial funding and leadership support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), M-AAA was established with the purpose of improving the quality of life in the Great Plains. Originally located in Lincoln, Nebraska, Woody Varner chaired the organization and Peter Milstein was hired as Executive Director.

By 1975, Mid-America Arts Alliance had moved its offices to Kansas City, Missouri, and Henry Moran was hired as Executive Director. Moran held that post until 2001, when he was appointed Executive Director
of the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities by President George W. Bush. Mary Kennedy McCabe was appointed Executive Director in 2002, after a long tenure as Director of ExhibitsUSA, M-AAA’s national museum service division.

A HISTORY OF PARTNERSHIP, COLLABORATION, AND ADAPTATION
Partnership has been central to the organization’s credo. Mid-America Arts Alliance’s organizing principle is rooted in the concept of the cooperative: by working together, efficiency is achieved in the distribution of arts programs. By working with the National Endowment for the Arts and the member state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas, M-AAA has been able to increase community access to outstanding regional, national, and international performing artists and exhibitions and to expand the performance and exhibition opportunities for artists within the Midwestern region.

Funding partners over the years have included the NEA, the Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, the Ford Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the H&R Block Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Union Pacific, the Houston Endowment, Altria Group, ConocoPhillips, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. With resources from these foundations and corporations, in addition to many others, M-AAA has provided arts experiences to people in all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Middle East, and has created programs, tours, and special exhibitions.

Also crucial to the mission has been the ability to adapt to changing conditions in the arts and culture field. That immediate response to the needs and concerns of its regional constituency over the years has led to the creation of numerous programs and a host of special initiatives—all designed to give communities greater access to a full range of cultural programming.

This adaptation to needs in the field has led for example, to the following: the creation of dance initiatives, which enabled tours of such companies as the Joffrey Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company; a direct touring initiative from the NEA focusing on underserved, rural communities; a regional tour of major orchestras funded by AT&T; the creation of Meet the Composer in association with Meet the Composer, Inc., in New York City, a program that gives grants to organizations who commission works by living American composers; the creation of ExhibitsUSA, a national museum service division, to tour arts and humanities exhibitions featuring the works of artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Elizabeth Layton, Luis Jiménez, Betye Saar, and more, to small and midsize museums; performing arts presenter exchanges with China and Mexico, with support from the U.S. State Department; the Hands-on Experiential Learning Program (HELP) for Small Museums, now being piloted in three regions of Texas; and Community Capacity, a program in partnership with National Arts Strategies and the Stanford School of Business that provides seminars and topical workshops to help arts executives and trustees better adapt to changes in the arts business environment.

REACH, ACCESS, AND IMPACT
In its beginnings, Mid-America Arts Alliance visual and performing arts touring programs reached nearly a million people annually throughout its Midwest region. Today, Mid-America Arts Alliance's programs and services reach into communities of all sizes and types—from major metropolitan areas to the smallest towns in rural America—by distributing high-quality performing and visual arts programming to over 300 communities throughout the country each year.

With a focus on affordability and an emphasis on education, Mid-America Arts Alliance is able to ensure access to the arts by providing a broad range of cultural programming to a wide variety of communities in the region and beyond. M-AAA supplies 850 performances and exhibitions and some 6,000 related educational programs to over two million people annually.
By supporting both artists and communities, Mid-America Arts Alliance's programs and services directly impact the overall cultural and economic health of the region. In any given year, performing artists supported by M-AAA earn an average of $5 million in fees, and its programs generate over $8.5 million in direct economic activity.
For more information about Mid-America Arts Alliance and any of its programs, visit the Web site at www.maaa.org, or contact Sarah McGreer, Communications Associate, at sarah@maaa.org or via phone at (816) 421-1388, ext. 230.