Artsplosure

Artsplosure is an art festival held each year in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, focused in the Moore Square Historic District. This Raleigh Arts Festival has been the premier arts festival in central North Carolina for 30 years with attendance reaching 80,000. Artsplosure has dozens of corporate and media sponsors.

The event includes over 170 visual artists showing and selling their work on the streets surrounding Moore Square in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. In the park, award-winning musicians perform live on a main stage throughout the weekend, large-scale art installations are displayed, and Kidsplosure offer crafts and performances just for children. The event is free to the public.

Artsplosure is unique in the region with the combination of headliner jazz and blues, visual art and participatory activities. What began as a modest street fair has evolved into an annual multi-disciplinary Spring Arts Festival, joining artists from around the nation with local businesses to present an exciting week of visual and performing arts. Close to 200 artists and crafts people show their work in the juried exhibition each spring.

Several museums typically participate in the Artsplosure Festival such as The Contemporary Art Museum, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, North Carolina Museum of History, North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, Raleigh City Museum, and Marbles Kids Museum. There is a Student Art Exhibition and collaborations with arts advocacy groups such as the Triangle Potters Guild. The Triangle Potters Guild is a non-profit organization that seeks to educate the public and to arouse interest at all levels of skill in the practice, standards, ethics and appreciation of the ceramic arts. Other cultural events are coordinated to run consecutively with Artsplosure such as The Annual Downtown Raleigh Home Tour

Artsplosure was conceived in 1978 by subcommittees of the newly formed City of Raleigh Arts Commission who were planning a citywide arts festival that would combine an "explosion" of art activity with people's "exposure" to all types of art. The following year, Artsplosure was incorporated to produce high quality and accessible arts festivals and to identify, nurture, and showcase artists seeking to reach wider audiences.

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