Buffalo’s arts community has deep roots, wide impact, and a unique regional sense of identity. The Creative Arts Initiative shares leadership and encourages partnership and collaboration with Buffalo’s leading artistic and cultural institutions.

Buffalo has a long and rich history of nurturing cutting edge artistic expression — from venerated institutions, like the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, dating back to the city's early era as the richest in the country — to those from the mid-’70s, when Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo started the artist-run center Hallwalls to feature visual artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and performance artists.