The National Endowment for the Arts will provide just more than $1 million to the Indiana Arts Commission, with an additional more than $300,000 to various art projects throughout the state.

A new leader is at the helm of the state’s arts agency. Indiana Arts Commission Executive Director Miah Michaelsen was recently appointed to the position.

Money for the fund is coming from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and Arts Midwest, with funding provided by the recent federal relief bill.

The graduate of Pike High School in Indianapolis says poetry is needed now more than ever "to remind us of the beauty that still surrounds us despite all of the seemingly unending anger and strife."

The Indiana Arts Commission announced Thursday that 48 Hoosier artists throughout the state will receive career development assistance through the agency's Individual Artist Program grants for Fiscal Year 2018.

Groups selected as recipients are located in Fishers, Indianapolis, Anderson, Terre Haute, Bloomington, Lafayette, Muncie and Greencastle.

The Indiana Arts Commission says it and 10 other Indiana arts organizations are receiving grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A buzz phrase in small Indiana communities the last several years has been "quality-of-life." One group in Frankfort - a diverse town of 16,000 -- hopes to sustain an arts guild, just two years after the county's first art gallery opened. Guild members say they'll have to contend with inertia from the community if they want to survive.

The Indiana Arts Commission announced Shari Wagner of Westfield has been selected as the new Indiana Poet Laureate.. She teaches poetry and memoir writing at the Indiana Writers Center and literature for Butler University's religion, spirituality and the arts seminar.

The Indiana Poet Laureate represents the State of Indiana and the art of poetry through the development and implementation of programming to the education community and general public.