How we got the name
Your Arts Council by (not just) Any Other Name
October 2, 2001
The oldest piece in the archive, and the one that explains the name on the front door. It also records the first year the Council published the Gallery Guide.
For its first four years this organization was called the Monroe Council of the Arts. On July 1, 2001 it became the Florida Keys Council of the Arts, and a release went out that autumn to explain why. The reasoning was plain, and it has not aged: people around the world know and love the Florida Keys, and far fewer know that the Keys make up most of Monroe County.
A new logo came with the new name, and enough residents wondered whether a second arts council had appeared that the release had to say, in as many words, that these were the same folks. The sentence it used to describe the work is twenty-five years old and still accurate:
The Florida Keys Council of the Arts connects all the Florida Keys artists and arts organizations with one another, with local audiences, and with tourists.
Florida Keys Council of the Arts, 2001
The release is also the archive’s only record of how the Council began. One clause carries it: incorporated by the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners in 1997. Nothing earlier survives in the files.
And the publications
Two of the three publications on this page trace back to this single release. It notes that the fall issue of the quarterly calendar brochure, then titled Who What When & Where, had hit the streets on October 1. That brochure is the ancestor of the Keys Arts Quarterly. And it announces something that turned out to matter rather more:
And we’re proud to be the new publisher of the colorful Florida Keys and Key West Art Gallery Association Guide.
Florida Keys Council of the Arts, 2001
That is the Gallery Guide, in its first year under this organization. It has been published every year since, and the current edition sits at the top of this page.
The release records the slogan of the day, which the Council still uses in a shorter form, and then signs off with a line that reads like it was written to be quoted, because it was.
Our popular slogan remains All the Arts, All the Keys, All the Time!
Florida Keys Council of the Arts, 2001
Source News release, keysarts.org, October 2, 2001