Best mid-sized towns in the midwest for art scenes
Art is big business today. You can go on Google, type in “landscape painting for sale” and thousands of choices come up. Amazon even has an “under $50” category. If you are looking for something that wasn’t made in a factory, there is no better place to shop for art than a local art fair. Big art fairs will bring in hundreds of local artists, each of who creates something just a little bit different. You can find just about anything you might be looking for, and likely a couple of things you didn’t think you wanted or needed. Not every city hosts art fairs and events, while others seem to have one every other weekend in the summer. So we took a look at our data and picked the best mid-sized towns in the midwest for art scenes.
Our definition of a mid-sized town is one whose population is between 10,000 and 74,999 (we’ll cover smaller and larger cities in a different post). For those who aren’t sure which states are included, the Midwest is defined as the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Joplin, MO – Population 50,150. Joplin Missouri tops our list, but it was a close call. Joplin has several art fairs, tied for the most in any mid-sized Midwestern city and it also has a lot of local art galleries per capita. So for local artists wanting to move to a midwest city that supports artists, consider Joplin.
Sikeston, MO – Population 16,318. Sikeston also has several art fairs throughout the year, which is amazing considering the size of Sikeston. The single art gallery in town was the only thing that brought it down to 2nd place. Still, the local art fairs give you plenty of opportunities to find whatever kind of art you are in the market for.
Royal Oak, MI – Population – 57,236. Rounding out our top 3 is Royal Oak, MI. Royal Oak has several art fairs and local art galleries, an impressive art footprint for such a small town.
If you are looking to relocate, It can be hard to try to find the perfect city for you. Maybe a city needs music and art to be a good place for you to live. That’s why we created the NextDiggs quiz so that you can decide what features are “the best” for you. We profiled every city in America with 5000 or more residents with 61 criteria. You can choose to answer all the questions, or only the ones pertaining to criteria that are important to you. So go ahead and take the quiz and find your own “top 3”.
Read about the best mid-sized towns for live music.
