Fort Wayne is blessed with a rich arts heritage.

It's not hard to imagine its beginnings here.

Consider the people living in and around the fort 200 years ago.

The blacksmith practiced his craft designing and building the everyday items needed in this new frontier.

The Miami Indians decorated themselves with beautiful beadwork and silver.

Music was certainly a part of everyday life.

After all, there was no television.

They had to make their own entertainment.

The arts were a necessity.

They improve the quality of life in the fort.

Just like today, Fort Wayne Arts, a grand tradition is made possible through a community service grant from Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne, an arts project grant from the Indiana Arts Commission with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Financial support from the members of tbe 39.

About 40 years ago.

The Fine Arts Foundation, what is now Arts United, was established as a means to help raise funds for area arts organizations.

The groups were spending more time trying to raise money than trying to make art.

Community leaders realized that these groups helped attract new business and promoted economic growth, not to mention enriching the lives of all citizens.

And so a more unified approach to supporting the arts was born.

The story that I hear is that back in 1955, there was a group of concerned citizens who wanted to make sure there was a basis of support for all the arts organizations in town.

Back at that time, there were only three or four major arts organizations in place.

So a group of them rented a city bus, traveled around town, going door to door, collecting nickels, dimes and quarters for the arts organizations.

And as a result of that effort, raised about $2,000, which they then gave out to the four or five arts organizations that were viable at the time.

And from that point, it has grown into what it is today an organization with a $1.5 million budget that just this year in in 1994 raised $1,170,000 for the arts.

So there's been a lot of growth, as you can see over the past 39 years.

This steady growth in financial support over the years has been led by an educational philosophy adopted by all Fort Wayne arts organizations.

Making art more accessible to the public makes it more appealing to the public.

That was the thinking when the Fine Arts Festival in Franke Park was established in the late 1950s.

The public was treated to such things as a Georgia O'Keeffe painting, hanging on a fence or an outside performance of Madame Butterfly.

When I think about the art, the visual arts that we had hanging out there unprotected, we had all these magnificent exhibits, I mean, with world famous artists and and here they were just we didn't have any security.

I mean, they were just out there and nobody bothered them.

All these wonderful sculptures and and paintings.

And eventually the Fine Arts Festival faded away, returned many years later as the four day festival, which in turn evolved into our current outdoor celebration of the arts known as Sunday in the Park with art during the three Rivers Festival.

Art education was the inspirational force behind the modest beginnings of the Fort Wayne Art Institute.

It was a private school.

It started out just like all of these things and small committees and group of people got together and decided they wanted to paint.

So and then they decided that they would like to hire someone to come in as an instructor.

So some of the Indiana artists that are quite famous, like Otto Starke and William Forsythe, were here as instructors.

Actually, it started back in about 1899.

The Hamilton Sisters are some very prominent names of early Fort Wayne were young girls and their father brought Steel and Otis Adams up from the Indianapolis area to tutor or to help his two daughters learn some of the finer cultural things of life.

And they began thinking that it was a waste of time to bring him up just for his two daughters.

So he let the two daughters invite some of their friends to come over.

And this sort of was the beginning.

The Fort Wayne Art Institute became affiliated with Indiana University.

Purdue University at Fort Wayne in 1976 and in 1990 moved from its longtime home in the West central neighborhood to the IPF campus.

The Fort Wayne Museum of Art began with the old art school as well, with the donation in 1922 of ten paintings from Theodore Theme in 1984.

The museum moved into a brand new modern facility that enabled the museum to give much more to the community.

Moving into this facility really put the museum in an in an entirely different ballgame.

It gave us an opportunity to reach much larger audiences and to provide far more extensive school programs, to bring in a whole other level of traveling exhibitions to care for our collection in a much better way.

So it really was almost like inventing a new institution in many ways, but having the benefit of having this long history of support in the community.

The presence of a museum in a community really gives people an opportunity to look at art, understand art, and even understand history in a totally different way.

We know that, you know, people are proud of having a museum.

They're proud of having a collection that has been donated primarily by people of the community.

They're proud of being able to come to the museum and see a major road to an exhibition that many people thought they'd never see in Fort Wayne in their lifetime.

It's also a great opportunity for children, and we tour each year between 16,018 thousand kids annually.

And for those kids who begin at this point as kindergartners, their relationship with the museum is entirely different than their parents, who may not have grown up with museums.

They take a real pride of ownership in it.

They feel comfortable here.

They bring their families back to it to see their favorite paintings and sculptures.

The Museum of Art maintains a 1300 piece permanent collection hosts.

Many high quality traveling exhibitions each year, offers a wide variety of classes and workshops for adults, Students, teachers and welcomes thousands of visitors yearly.

The Fort Wayne Ballet has an interesting history that started as a private school in 1952, owned by John Neff and John MOSCOSO.

In the bylaws and in the charter, the focus was to bring good dance performance to the city on a regular basis.

The parents all worked so hard and so well together.

I think particularly of our production of Cinderella, which for me was one of the outstanding things we did, because the fathers all got together to build the coach.

And what they did was to approach an Amish farmer in the area and got the base for a wagon and then built the coach on that.

And by the time they built it in the garage of one of the families, I can't remember which one out south.

So when it was time to bring it down to the theater, we made quite a media event out of it.

I mean, you know, we weren't so behind the times either.

We had a procession right down Clinton Street with that coach.

And one of the things that attracted Judy and I to Fort Wayne was the wealth of history that the ballet had.

It had been in existence when we came almost 30 years.

And the quality of directorship that it had had always been very, very high in the industry.

Fort Wayne Ballet was known as a very top notch regional dance center.

We had known several of the directors and also several of the teachers who had preceded us, and we're very impressed with them.

So when we had the opportunity to be called by Fort Wayne and asked if we were interested in applying for the job, it was an interesting and appealing offer.

Because of that, that long history.

The Fort Wayne Ballet, a core of professional dancers supported by a group of outstanding younger dancers, introduces over 3000 students a year to ballet and performs in over 80 area classrooms during the school year.

The Fort Wayne Youtheatre is another organization with a long, successful history.

You Theater is an organization was founded in October 1930 for two ladies.

Mrs. Chan Ray and Mrs. Lester Jacobs looked around Fort Wayne and realized there was plenty of entertainment for adults but no entertainment for children.

So they went to the present of the old Fort players, now the Civic Theater, Doctor McAllister, and asked if they could form a children's theater.

As a result of that, they became a committee member of the old Fort players and they established a goal to bring the highest quality of children's entertainment to the young people in Fort Wayne to begin a series of classes to teach them diction, concentration, creativity in all form or matter.

60 years ago, the first production was the Steadfast Tin Soldier, complete with a large cast.

Today, the Fort Wayne Youtheatre is considered one of the top five children's theaters in the country, offering numerous classes that serve over 250 children each year.

Oh, it's very exciting.

Very, very exciting, because you're working with their self-esteem and their pride and their confidence.

And we work as much on that as we do with the technique of acting.

We really do.

And I try to tell I said, when you're in a play and you come off that stage and you're tired, you know you've done your job.

And when they do, when they come off and they feel good about themselves, that that's the payoff, that that's the big money.

Isn't that it was salary or audience curtain calls or whatever.

It's the feeling they have about themselves.

We all need that.

Auditions at the Fort Wayne Youtheatre regularly attract over 150 children, hoping to perform and assist with sound lights and props.

Dynamo hope that keeping our rich and varied past alive.

The 75 year old Allen County Fort Wayne Historical Society maintains the second largest historical museum in Indiana at the Old City Hall Museum.

Well, the Historical Society itself didn't begin until about 1921, and then Sam Foster called a meeting and he thought that we had enough of Fort Wayne's history was very important to everyone, and he thought it should be preserved.

So he called a meeting of the community to see how many people would come out, and 175 people came out and they all signed up to become members of the Historical Society to preserve and conserve the history of the community.

Now, they were very lucky because beginning in 1902, the local chapter had been collecting artifacts and we had those on display right now in the Relic Room.

And so they had had them down at the courthouse.

And when the Historical Society formed in 1921, they met for a few years and then finally they were given a home at the old Swinney Homestead in 1925, and then the DA donated those items to put them on display out there.

So they were a first collection.

We have the and irons that were used in the fireplace at the fort.

We have the key to the main gate of the fort.

We have things that belonged to Little Turtle.

We have Anthony Wayne's camp bed, which is very interesting.

Anthony Wayne used it in both the revolutionary and the Indian Wars here in 1793 and 94.

And as far as we can tell, it's one of only four in the country.

Last year, the society hosted over 70,000 visitors, including over 10,000 schoolchildren and one of the most beloved of all fine arts organizations in the city is the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, an orchestra dedicated to providing the community with the finest in symphonic literature.

In 1944, a group of music enthusiasts organized the Philharmonic Society of Fort Wayne to fill a need for more frequent performances of the works of music's great masters.

Having a tradition of singing from our German, Lutheran and German Catholic foundations.

I think that's always been helpful to music in this area.

People.

It's a it's a part of their life.

It's a part of their history and important to their, uh, to their religion.

And so I think that that has been very helpful to us Under the direction of outstanding conductors, the orchestra has continued to improve and quality increased many times over the number of performances and reached out into many other communities.

The success is due in part to a strong and talented core group of musicians and a supportive board of directors.

I guess the word is I'm really proud of everything that's been accomplished.

Um, but the thing is, the support, uh, from the board and the community has made all the difference.

I mean, a conductor or a manager can go in to a community with all kinds of dreams about what they'd like to do and can be frustrated at every turn.

At the turn of the century, Fort Wayne was considered a theater town because of its location on a major rail route between Chicago and the east.

Some prominent names performed here, such as Ethel Barrymore, W.C. Fields and Sarah Bernhardt.

Perhaps that's why the Civic Theater has such a long history.

66 years old.

In 1939, the News-Sentinel stated The Old Fort players have afforded unequaled opportunities for many Fort Wayne persons with dramatic talent to find avenues of self-expression.

They have kept the torch of legitimate theater alight the Community Theater Guild, Civic Theater, League, old fort players.

And finally, in 1940, the Fort Wayne Civic Theater performing in the Majestic Theater, The Palace Theater and now the Performing Arts Center is one of the oldest theaters of its kind in the country and has spawned several other theater companies in the community.

I'm happy that we have what we have.

We have the arena.

You know, we have IPFW.

We have First Presbyterian Church doing great theater during the summertime.

We have center stage.

You know, we have we have the South, the great light players down south.

So I'm very happy that we have about five year round production companies.

That's a lot for a small town like us.

But I think people in Fort Wayne like the theater, they like the arts and they especially like to brag about having the arts in town, even if they don't go right, you know, they don't go they like to brag about, well, we have you know, we have the Philharmonic, we have a ballet, we have the comets, we have the fury.

Right?

We have the Wizards.

Fort Wayne's a funny town.

We know that we're a number two city in Indiana, so it's very important for us to sort of hold our head up when we talk about other communities like Chicago or Indianapolis.

So, like we to have quality a lifestyle and theaters quality lifestyle, it's very important that children see theater, you know, so that they get a taste in their mouth that theater is in the schools.

It's very important that our senior citizens see theater.

You know, some of the classics.

It's important that we bring in theater into this town like the embassy does.

The Broadway series.

It's theater is a vital food.

You know, it's very true.

And human human nature, we always do what's good for us, you know, And I think theater is one of those things that's good for people.

It opens their hearts out, that opens their minds up and challenges them and makes them smile and laugh and become sensitive to people around them.

It opens up their whole world.

It gets them out of their home and into the community.

The Civic produces eight shows a year attended by tens of thousands of patrons each season.

The Fort Wayne Cinema Center is the oldest independent film organization in Indiana, and although it's one of the younger arts groups in town, it has a strong and loyal.

Following the history of the cinema Center really starts with a small theater down on the landing called The Spectator and it was in the mid well, the early seventies and it was professionally owned and operated and it featured international, independent, classic kinds of films.

However, as we've all found, that's not necessarily a commercially viable kind of theater.

And when it went out of business in 1976, the film lovers, the educators and some community leaders decided it was time for Fort Wayne to have its own art film.

House.

And out of that grew a nonprofit organization, the Fort Wayne Cinema Center.

It is really the core of our mission is to the exploration, the educational power, the unique vision and the powerful voice of film to help people explore this world and learn more about themselves.

Another relatively young but thriving organization had a very interesting beginning.

It was the brain child of a particular person in Fort Wayne by the name of Bruce Linker.

Everybody thinks that ArtLink was sort of a clever word that was made up ArtLink, all that really wasn't was named after a person.

Bruce lived on Broadway, had an apartment upstairs.

He was interested in art.

He is not an artist, but he started on weekends having a salon and inviting artists.

I was one to bring their work up to his house and then he would invite guests and people would come in and look and hopefully people would buy.

Because artists, you know, in those days and even now, like the cellar work, so they can go on to do some art.

The gallery proved popular and moved twice before arriving at its current space in the Hall Community Arts Center in 1990.

Well, I think it's important that not only Fort Wayne, but Indiana has a gallery such as ours that shows the work of emerging or mid-career artists.

If an artist's work is never looked at, it's never really criticized by the general populace or the general citizen.

If the person has worth.

He will be acclaimed.

He will be encouraged to work longer.

He will be critiqued by the public, which I think sometimes important, although most artists don't paint for anybody else but themselves.

Nevertheless, I think if we didn't have a place to show work, like in art, like there would never be any work for a museum.

So museums who warehouse and collect and promote artists I think need a place to funnel all these artists.

ArtLink is the only not for profit gallery in the state, not affiliated with a university or an artists co-op.

Yet another young and energetic organization is arch working to preserve Fort Wayne's cultural and historic heritage as an example.

Arch is currently evaluating the murals in the Allen County Courthouse for restoration.

You know, the country's only 200 years old.

I think the oldest thing that we have here in Fort Wayne is 1840.

I mean, compared to Europe, that's nothing.

But it's all part of a the movement that went across the United States when we began to develop an architecture was a way that that was expressed through the times.

And that's part of our heritage here in Fort Wayne to see how architecture changed.

And it's easier to explain if you can actually see than it is to show a book or picture.

Arch helps to create awareness of the value of preserving historically and architecturally significant structures like the Canal House of 1840, which currently is home to Arts United.

The arts organizations in this community served so many purposes.

These disciplines are the avenue shoes through which you can channel any kind of thinking and training and education you want.

I, as you will be able to tell, I'm adamant about this business.

These are not frills.

These are not extra things that you do when you just don't have anything else to occupy your time.

These are should be the basis.

These are essential to good thinking discipline.

And of course, in the case of the ballet, to tremendous physical discipline, there is nothing more disciplined than this.

And just as in the ancient Greek education system, the gymnasium was the center of everything.

If you don't have the physical development and the strong discipline of all this, you really can't get the level of mental development that you're looking for.

That's my belief.

It's that important.

It touches all everybody.

And especially people are interested in their children learning about these things.

It's a commentary, an honest commentary on society at any one time.

When we study history, it's hard to to divorce it from studying art at the same time because, uh, many of those many of the artists were people who were commenting on the time they were trying to show what was good and what was bad.

The architecture reflects and the music reflects, and certainly the literature reflects it.

And I think too, that the people that one thing we've always been very fierce about is the idea of excellence in the arts, right?

This organized this umbrella organization, fortunately, was able to begin with professional people and always had terrific professionals at the helm of of the various arts.

And that meant that there was a criterion for what was really good in art and people respond to that.

Right now there's a real concern about, uh, youth violence, about the quality of the lives of our children on the streets, Uh, and the arts organizations in this community are doing a lot to address those things for example, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic just a couple of years ago instituted a program called Hip Hop Pete and the Rock and Role Models.

It's essentially a drug awareness program that's take it out to sixth grade classes all over the, uh, the Northeast Indiana area.

It's it's a very innovative and unique way to educate kids about the dangers of drug abuse, about how to avoid the pitfalls of drugs on the streets.

And that's one way in which the arts are in a very tangible way, addressing some of the problems that kids in our society face today.

There are lots of programs that have been ongoing for a long time.

The Civic Theater's in the Wings program brings in thousands of kids each year, exposes them to community theater, gets them involved in not just watching the theater, but, uh, producing theater, acting, doing the behind the scenes stuff, you know, stage management, lighting, sound, all of those kinds of things.

In short, it gives it gives kids viable options for ways to spend their time other than the more negative activities that children might find on the streets.

One of the things that I think sets the arts in Fort Wayne apart from other communities that we've lived in is that there seems to be a real desire by the people who run Fort Wayne, uh, in the corporate community, in the government, in the powers that be to use the arts as a way of improving the quality of life.

And because of that, the arts play a very important role in our community.

And I think that makes our job a lot easier.

There is no question what the arts do for this community and what this community does for the arts.

Arts are essential.

Let's start thinking about taking art away.

And little by little, you start everything you're involved with has something to do with art in one form or another.

Take it all away.

There's nothing left.

Fort Wayne Arts.

A grand tradition, is made possible through a community service grant from Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne, an arts project grant from the Indiana Arts Commission with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and Financial support from the members of TV39