Look Around Sioux City: You’ll Find the Gilchrist Foundation Throughout Sioux City

Take a walk through downtown Sioux City, attend a summer concert, visit an arts festival or explore the riverfront. Chances are you’ll encounter something the Gilchrist Foundation has helped make possible.

For decades, the Gilchrist Foundation has invested in projects, programs and organizations that enrich life in Sioux City and the surrounding area. Some of that impact is easy to see, like a building, a performance space or a piece of public art. Other times, it’s found in an experience shared by thousands of people.

Look around Sioux City. The impact of the Gilchrist Foundation is everywhere.

Hear It: The Gilchrist Foundation Supports Music

The Foundation has helped fund musical performances and education since it was founded in 1998, including the area’s biggest outdoor music festival.

Saturday in the Park

Since 1991, Saturday in the Park has brought free, national-caliber live music to the Grandview Park Municipal Bandshell on the Saturday closest to the Fourth of July. The single-day festival draws an estimated 25,000 people from across the Midwest, making it one of Sioux City’s largest and most anticipated summer traditions. The Gilchrist Foundation has supported Saturday in the Park for years, including project grants of $150,000 in recent years, helping keep one of the region’s signature community gatherings free and accessible to everyone who wants to attend.

From one of Sioux City’s biggest summer traditions to opportunities for young musicians: while Saturday in the Park brings music to thousands of people for one summer weekend, the Gilchrist Music Education Center is designed to nurture a love of music for generations.

Gilchrist Music Education Center

On June 16, the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra celebrated the opening of the Gilchrist Music Education Center with a ribbon cutting at the historic Orpheum Theatre. The 2,800-square-foot center features a music library, modern rehearsal and recording facilities, and climate-controlled storage that protects the Symphony’s instruments and more than a century of music. Most importantly, it gives young musicians in Siouxland a dedicated place to learn, practice and grow. Foundation support totals $475,000 for the center, representing a long-term community investment.

The Foundation also supports the SCSO’s annual Gilchrist Pops Series, which brings even more memorable performances to the Orpheum stage.

See It: The Gilchrist Foundation Funds the Arts

Supporting the visual arts is another pillar of the Foundation’s longtime giving mission.

ArtSplash

ArtSplash has grown from a single-day event into a full-campus celebration of art, creativity and community. Hosted by the Sioux City Art Center, the festival now spreads across the Art Center’s Atrium and galleries as well as the studios of the Gilchrist Learning Center, giving visitors the chance to experience art in a variety of spaces. Alongside art vendors, ArtSplash features live music, food vendors and activities for kids. In 2024, the Gilchrist Foundation awarded the Art Center a $30,000 project grant to help grow ArtSplash and support the festival’s continued evolution.

Gilchrist Learning Center

Few buildings capture the Foundation’s physical legacy in Sioux City quite like the Gilchrist Learning Center. Part of the Sioux City Art Center campus, the Learning Center is used year-round for arts education and for ArtSplash programming, giving children and families a dedicated place to engage with art. The Foundation’s support for the Art Center Association of Sioux City includes a 2019 project grant of $250,000 for a major exhibit, a 2018 grant of $408,547.66, and a capital campaign gift of $800,000 that served as the final challenge match for the Gilchrist Learning Center itself.

Public Art and Murals

The Foundation’s support for the arts extends outside traditional cultural institutions and onto Sioux City’s streets. In 2025, the Gilchrist Foundation funded a new mural at 712 Market Street, the fourth in a series installed throughout the West 7th Street area. Created by artist Jill Wells with residents and clients from Opportunities Unlimited, the mural focuses on music, volunteering and the importance of showing up for one’s community, themes that echo the Foundation’s own approach to giving.

Experience It: The Gilchrist Foundation Brings Sioux City Together

The Foundation has also helped preserve the places that matter most in Siouxland.

Chris Larsen Park

The Foundation helped redevelop Sioux City’s Riverfront to make it into a space for everyone in the community to enjoy. The Chris Larsen Park Riverfront Redevelopment Project transformed the former South Bottoms area, a historic part of Sioux City that was home to some of the city’s earliest pioneers, immigrants and families. Multiple years and millions of dollars were spent redeveloping this historic area of Sioux City. The entire project cost $12 million, with $6 million coming from the City of Sioux City and the other $6 million from grants and donations, including awards from the Gilchrist Foundation.

In 2019, the Foundation awarded the Parks and Recreation department a $100,000 project grant for Phase 1 of the project and another $100,000 in 2021 for Phase 2. Construction was completed in 2023.

The renovations included improved park spaces for small and large family/community gatherings, event spaces, native plantings, active recreation areas, fitness stations, three park shelters, restroom facilities, two basketball courts, a dog park for both small and large dogs, play equipment for ages 2-12 and enhancements to the recreational trail system.

Orpheum Theatre

The historic Orpheum Theatre has hosted Sioux City performances and community gatherings for more than a century, and the Gilchrist Foundation has helped keep it that way. The Foundation contributed $90,000 in 2023 toward new stage curtains and $58,000 in 2024 for additional preservation, on top of its investment in the Gilchrist Music Education Center now housed inside the building. It’s a fitting past-present-future story: a historic landmark preserved, a modern education center built within it and generations of performances still to come.

Grow It: The Gilchrist Foundation Invests in Learning

Investing in Sioux City’s future means investing in its youngest residents, too.

Siouxland YMCA Early Childhood Learning & Youth Development Center

In 2025, the Norm Waitt Sr. YMCA opened its new Early Learning and Youth Development Center, a 12,000-square-foot expansion serving children from six weeks to 18 years old. The $5 million project added more than 100 new childcare spaces in a region the YMCA has identified as a childcare desert, along with dedicated classrooms, an indoor playground and space for after-school and STEAM programming. The Gilchrist Foundation contributed a $50,000 capital campaign grant in 2023 to help make the expansion possible. It’s a reminder that investing in children is an investment in the community’s future, and that Gilchrist support extends well beyond the projects most people immediately associate with the Foundation.

All of these projects may look different: a music festival, an arts education center, a historic theater and a youth development facility, but they share something important. Each creates an opportunity for people to learn, gather, experience something new or connect with their community.

That’s the lasting impact of philanthropy. It’s not always found on a grant application or in a dollar amount. Sometimes, it’s found by simply looking around.

So, the next time you attend Saturday in the Park, visit ArtSplash, pass a mural on West 7th Street, walk into the Orpheum or explore the riverfront, take a closer look. You may be seeing the impact of the Gilchrist Foundation.