The Northwest Arts Center is a non-profit arts center operating on the campus of Minot State University. Occupying newly renovated space in the lower level of Minot State University’s Gordon B Olson Library, the Center includes the Walter Piehl Gallery, reception area and outer gallery, dedicated Native American Collection display areas, and climate-controlled collections storage for the University’s Permanent Art Collection and Native American Collections. Established in 1992, the Arts Center was organized to formally support expanded offerings of a Department of Art gallery program that had been in existence since 1969. Starting as a hallway gallery in the 1970s, exhibition venues evolved through the 1980s and 1990s to dedicated galleries in the art department and the University’s Gordon B Olson Library, and finally to the present Arts Center in the lower level of the library in 2018. Over the years the Center has enriched the artistic life of northwest North Dakota with year-round art exhibitions, a performing arts series, a public lecture series, and numerous workshops and artists-in-residence activities. Programming of the Northwest Arts Center is supported by entry fees from its juried competitions, grants, student activity fees, memberships, and private donations. All exhibits are free and open to the public.