North Carolina has been a pioneer in exploring new channels for state support of the arts. It was the first state to fund its own symphony, to endow its own art museum, to found a state school of the arts, to create a statewide arts council, and to establish a cabinet-level Department of Cultural Resources. Its state arts council, created in 1964, reaches the pubic through a network of over 100 community arts councils and over 600 arts organizations each year.
The North Carolina Symphony, based in Raleigh, gives free concerts to more than 150,000 public schoolchildren and performs 175 concerts annually. The North Carolina Museum of Art, which is visited by about 230,000 people each year, features one of the finest collections of early European master paintings in the country. The museum's collection spans 5,000 years and includes work by Dutch masters, Renaissance masterpieces, Egyptian artifacts, classical statues, and tribal and contemporary art.
At least 200 arts-related festivals are held in North Carolina each year. Summer dance and music festivals, as well as professional theaters and historical outdoor dramas, galleries and museums, and the crafts community all serve as anchors for the state's tourism industry. North Carolina's Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Paul Green created the genre of historical drama with the 1937 production of The Lost Colony. North Carolina's stages nine outdoor historical dramas (double the number of any other state).
Based for 20 years in Durham, the American Dance Festival has commissioned new dance works, preserved dance history, trained dancers, and presented the best in contemporary dance. The African American Dance Ensemble, based in North Carolina, performs for over 350,000 people across the United States each year. Flat Rock Playhouse, the state theater of North Carolina, performs for over 60,000 people.
Folk and traditional arts thrive across North Carolina in all disciplines. The North Carolina Folk Heritage Awards are given to recognize the state's leading folk artists. Penland School of Crafts, the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Southern Highland Guild, Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum, and the North Carolina Pottery Center are but a few of the organizations in North Carolina that help to keep the craft traditions alive.
In 2003, North Carolina arts organizations received grants totaling $1,328,100 from the National Endowment for the Arts. North Carolina has over 2,000 arts organizations. About 34,000 artists work in all disciplines, and over 18,000,000 citizens and visitors participate in the arts programs. The North Carolina Humanities Council is active in a number of programs. In 2000, the National Endowment for the Humanities contributed $2,674,639 to 40 state programs.
For 30 years, the North Carolina Arts Council has supported artists in the schools to teach, perform, and encourage creative expression. The council was instrumental in funding two of the first arts-based curriculum experiments in the state; there are now 27 elementary schools teaching core curriculum through the arts and interdisciplinary instruction. The Arts Council's Grassroots Arts Program, established in 1977, was the nation's first per capita funding program for the local arts initiatives in which decision making remained at the local level. The program has invested over $21 million in community-based programming over the past 25 years.