A new year is dawning for the Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana. Starting Jan. 1, the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library will formally take over the council’s programming under the direction of Andrea Adams, ARTSWIN’s director of the Bower-Suhrheinrich Foundation Gallery.
State legislation eliminated a local tax levy that helped fund the entity in 2022, so the 55-year-old nonprofit unsuccessfully tried to find ways to make up the deficit. “What we kept coming back to is the mission itself: The support of artists and arts organizations and arts advocacy were more important than any kind of institutional ego,” ARTSWIN Executive Director Anne McKim says. “If you are an artist, a consumer of arts, (or) an arts patron, the library is where you will go.”
McKim approached EVPL Chief Operating Officer Heather Kelsey a few months ago about managing gallery exhibits and artist services. Though the meeting was bittersweet, Kelsey seized the opportunity to expand the library’s programming, including ARTSWIN’s arts advocacy and popular concerts. “This idea of access that’s so important to the Arts Council is at the core of what we do: free and open access to information, the arts, cultural pieces, and everything we offer,” Kelsey says.
ARTSWIN’s Oct. 22 announcement gave artists time to adjust to the transition and materials to move out of the council’s Main Street location. Decisions are still being made, including whether an independent entity is needed to distribute arts grants and how the library system will execute programming across its eight locations and beyond.
“We have already been getting phone calls from artists and other people who are like, ‘How can I support this transition to EVPL?’ That’s a phenomenal thing to hear, that people want to be involved, and they want to be here from the start and help us get it going,” says Kelsey, who encourages donations to the EVPL Foundation, which has financially supported the library system’s programming since 1999.
“Having eight different spaces where we can come and meet people where they are, as opposed to telling the community they have to come to us — that infinitely expands our opportunities to get art into people’s lives every day,” McKim says.
