Florida is home to a vibrant and diverse cultural community. Florida ranks near the top nationally in state funding for culture and the arts. Cultural organizations thrive in virtually every county and include museums, galleries, symphonies, dance and opera companies, and literary organizations. Offerings range from the Miami Book Fair International at one end of the state, to the widely renowned Jacksonville Jazz Festival, to the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola at the other end. According to the 1990 US Census, Florida ranked fourth nationally in the number of individual artists living and working in the state. Key West has long been a gathering place for creative artists, ranging from John James Audubon and Winslow Homer to Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams.
Regional and metropolitan symphony orchestras include the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra (Fort Lauderdale), Florida Orchestra (Tampa), Jacksonville Symphony, and the Florida West Coast Symphony (Sarasota). Opera companies include the Florida Grand Opera (Miami) and the Sarasota Opera. The four state theater companies are the Caldwell Theatre Company (Boca Raton), Hippodrome State Theatre (Gainesville), Coconut Grove Playhouse (Miami), and the Asolo Theatre Company (Sarasota). The annual Florida International Festival (FIF), established in 1966, features world-renowned artists in music and dance. The London Symphony Orchestra, which has a summer residency in Daytona Beach, provides an annual concert series for the FIF and the city.
Florida is also home to premier museums and performing arts halls, such as the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota), the Norton Gallery (West Palm Beach), the Miami Art Museum, Orlando Museum of Art, Philharmonic Center for the Arts (Naples), Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts (West Palm Beach).
Truly unique cultural institutions also located in Florida include Fairchild Tropical Garden (Miami), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach), and Bok Tower Gardens (Lake Wales), which has a working carillon.
The State of Florida's Division of Cultural Affairs (DCA) was established in 1969. The Florida Arts Council (previously the Fine Arts Council of Florida) serves in an advisory capacity to the DCA. The DCA has a partnership with the Southern Arts Federation. The DCA also coordinates a touring program, a public art program that acquires artwork for new state buildings, an arts license plate program, and the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, which includes such luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Charles, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 2003, Florida arts organizations received grant awards from the National Endowment of the Arts that totaled $1,334,900.
The Florida Humanities Council, established in 1971, sponsors about 300 free programs per year throughout the state. In 2000, the National Endowment for the Humanities supported 33 Florida based programs with grants totaling $1,697,758. In 1997, it was estimated that attendance at arts and cultural events reached about 80 million people.