Come visit us at the newly renovated Warden's House and visit the Botanical Gardens while you are there. 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 for 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. In the 1980s, the first grants to individual artists were awarded.
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. They serve as blazes on the trail to a more harmonious, exuberant, and abundant life. The Idaho Commission on the Arts endeavors to provide quality experiences in the arts for all Idahoans. We, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, see an Idaho alive with creativity from the design of its buildings to the interpretation of its parks to the depictions of its scenery. We see an Idaho where the arts are a basic part of every child's formal education.