About Art All Night :
Dupont Circle

Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets celebrated 20 years of supporting small businesses - and a successful 10th Art All Night 2023, with a massive turnout, drawing a third of the cities overall attendance for Art All Night!

This event is produced by our community for everyone to enjoy, many thanks to the Department of Small & Local Business Development, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and Dupont Circle Business Improvement District. A special thanks to Mayor Bowser who has supported this event for years!

We had a wonderful lineup of local artists, makers, and performing artists throughout Dupont Circle. Art All Night brings together the heart and soul of DC's creative community and we’re looking forward to Art All Night 2024!

Stay tuned for save the dates and more details!

History of Art All Night

Art All Night: Nuit Blanche DC was first produced in 2011 by Ariana Austin and Alexander Padro of Shaw Main Streets, and funded with a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.  Ms. Austin and Mr. Padro’s goal was to bring Paris’ famed Nuit Blanche overnight arts and culture festival to Washington, DC and to produce an event that would unite the creative, cultural and international capital of our city.  They redesigned the festival and transformed it from an exclusively arts focused activity into a creative place making opportunity that gave equal importance to the art and to the places where it took place. 

Curated by Ms. Austin and a team of volunteers, the first festival exceeded all expectations and attracted 15,000 attendees. A Taste of Art All Night followed in 2012 in the Penn Quarter, presented by the Downtown BID. In 2013, Shaw Main Streets brought back the full festival for an encore, with funding from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Department of Small and Local Business Development. In both 2011 and 2013, the event brought unprecedented attention to the DC metropolitan area’s art scene through the live indoor and outdoor musical performances and art installations which were presented in vacant commercial spaces and warehouses, in public spaces (libraries, recreation centers, and parks), and in theaters and art galleries. Notably, programming even took place inside businesses, some of which had never opened at night. Needless to say, both events drew enthusiastic crowds and many Shaw restaurants and bars reported all-time record sales. 

In 2014 and in 2015, through funding and project support from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, funding from the Department of Small and Local Business Development, and under the creative direction of Ariana Austin, the festival expanded to include four other DC Main Streets organizations: Congress Heights, Dupont Circle, H Street, and North Capitol, in addition to Shaw. In 2016, the event grew to seven participating Main Streets organizations and was rebranded as Art All Night: Made in DC. The expanded event attracted an exceptional amount of attention from both new and traditional media and it drew an estimated 50,000 participants from throughout the metropolitan area and beyond.  Today, Art All Night is citywide, including 16 neighborhoods this year.

To learn about all the neighborhoods, visit www.dcartallnight.org.