An art center or arts centre is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for musical performance, workshop areas, educational facilities, technical equipment, etc. In Britain, arts centres began after World War II and gradually changed from mainly middle-class places to 1960s and 70s trendy, alternative centres and eventually in the 1980s to serving the whole community with a programme of enabling access to wheelchair users and differently abled individuals and groups. In the United States, "arts centers" are generally either establishments geared toward exposing, generating, and making accessible art making to arts-interested individuals, or buildings that rent primarily to artists, galleries, or companies involved in art making.
References
Evans, G. (2001) 'Amenity planning and the arts centre', Chapter 4 of Cultural Planning: an urban renaissance? London, Routledge.
