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Beginning with the installation of La Grande Vitesse, Grand Rapids has been host to an annual festival of the arts downtown, known to locals simply as Festival. During the first weekend in June, several blocks of downtown surrounding the Calder stabile next to City Hall are closed to traffic. Festival features several stages with free live performances, food booths selling a variety of ethnic cuisine, art demonstrations and sales, and other arts-related activities. Organizers bill it as the largest all-volunteer arts festival in the United States. Also in Vandenberg Plaza are various country-specific ethnic festivals that occur throughout the summer season.
In Grand Rapids in 1973, Main Street America celebrated mainstream art, as the city hosted Sculpture off the Pedestal, an exemplar of public sculpture exhibitions, which assembled 13 world-renowned artists, including Mark di Suvero, John Henry, Kenneth Snelson, Robert Morris, John Mason and Stephen Antonakos, in a single, citywide celebration. Sculpture off the Pedestal was a public/private partnership, which included financial support by the National Endowment for the Arts, educational support from the Michigan Council for the Arts and in-kind contributions from individuals, business and industry. Fund-raising events, volunteers and locals housing artists contributed to the public [character of the event.
In mid-2004, the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) began construction on a new, larger building for its art museum collection. The new building site is several blocks from the present museum, facing downtown's Ecliptic by Maya Lin at Rosa Parks Circle.
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