MISSION

SPACES invests in artists by providing the resources, platform and connections to create radical new work that challenges and deepens our understanding of the world.  

VISION

Cleveland is a place where artists come to take risks and experiment.

WHAT WE DO

SPACES commissions artists from around the world—at all stages of their careers and in all media—to make new work that is responsive to timely issues. We use these projects as a jumping off point to create educational initiatives that help develop a more informed citizenry. We also distribute grants to artists outside of our residency and exhibition programs.

CORE VALUES AND BELIEFS

Artists come first. We exist to serve artists. Every decision we make prioritizes artists’ creative development, professional growth, and long-term careers.

Creative risk is essential. Artistic risk is fundamental to a healthy culture. We actively protect and advocate for work that is experimental, and politically and socially challenging.                 

Process matters. We value the act of making art as much as the outcome. Time, space, critique, and reflection are foundational to meaningful artistic growth.

Artist work should be elevated. Exhibiting at SPACES affirms artists. We use our platform to advance artists’ work by creating legitimacy, visibility, and professional opportunity—locally, nationally, and beyond.

Art has purpose. We support artists in creating work that responds to timely issues and contributes to a more informed and engaged public.

Artists deserve professional respect. We treat artists as professionals. We commit to fair pay, clear expectations, and real resources that honor artists’ labor, expertise, and contribution to cultural life.

Sustainability enables our mission. We are committed to the financial and operational health of SPACES so we can sustain our mission and support artists over the long term.

Trust is earned. We commit to transparency, consistency, and follow-through. Maintaining trust with artists, partners, funders, and the public is essential to our role and earned through our actions.

OUR HISTORY

SPACES was established in 1978 by artists, for artists. At a time when experimental, interdisciplinary, and non-commercial work was largely excluded from traditional galleries and museums, Cleveland artists created SPACES not as another institution, but as a platform where artistic work could exist on its own terms. From the beginning, SPACES was rooted in experimentation and driven by artists themselves.

This founding ethos shaped everything that followed. Early on, SPACES created “a-space” for visual art and “p-space” for performance, often bringing the two together for cross-disciplinary work. Programming was built collaboratively with artists, and the organization operated deliberately outside conventional institutional norms. In its earliest years, the question was not how to grow, but whether SPACES should have a “rudder” at all.

Continuous Evolution
SPACES has never been a static institution. From its earliest days to now, the organization has moved in response to changing neighborhoods, rising costs, and evolving artistic needs. Each location reflected a moment in SPACES’ growth, and each move forced a deeper question: How does an artist-driven organization remain experimental and accessible while building the infrastructure required to sustain itself . . . without becoming an inflexible institution?

Rather than choosing one over the other, SPACES learned to do both—committing space and resources to creative risk while strengthening its administrative and fundraising capacity to sustain that work. This balance between remaining nimble, advancing artists and building organizational sustainability has shaped every chapter of SPACES’ evolution and remains central to its identity.

The First Permanent Home
In 1990, SPACES reached a major milestone when it purchased its own building on the Superior Viaduct. After more than a decade of operating in leased spaces, the organization finally had a permanent home. Ownership brought stability and ability to plan beyond short-term leases, and it opened new opportunities to generate earned income.

Over the next two decades, this stability allowed SPACES to deepen its impact. The organization expanded its programming, built a stronger membership base, and presented the work of thousands of artists across exhibitions, performances, and special projects. During this era, SPACES became not just an alternative space, but a recognized cultural anchor in Cleveland’s contemporary arts landscape.

A New Chapter in Hingetown
By the mid-2010s, the city around SPACES was once again transforming, and the decision to sell the Superior Viaduct building marked another turning point. SPACES relocated to the Van Rooy Building in Hingetown with the explicit goal of increasing visibility and drawing more people into the space. As an up-and-coming neighborhood, Hingetown offered greater foot traffic and new audiences, while the building itself provided a flexible environment well-suited to SPACES’ experimental and performance-based programming.

Not Only Exhibitions
In the late 2010s and early 2020s, SPACES expanded its role by providing artist support funds, emergency relief grants during the pandemic, and new residency programs. These efforts reflected a philosophical shift in the organization’s history: SPACES is now not just a venue, but a platform that responds to the real conditions artists face, adapting as those conditions change.

National Visibility
The selection of SPACES to curate the U.S. Pavilion for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale marked a moment of national and international recognition, underscoring the organization’s credibility far beyond Northeast Ohio. Importantly, SPACES leveraged that visibility back into Cleveland, reinforcing its long-standing belief that global relevance and local impact are not mutually exclusive.

Looking Ahead
Today, SPACES is entering its next chapter under new leadership, with new programs and a renewed focus on how it best serves artists and community. While its locations, neighborhoods, and offerings have evolved, its purpose has not: SPACES exists to support artists, bold work, and experimentation and has established its role as one of Cleveland’s most enduring artist-centered institutions and a cornerstone of the region’s contemporary arts ecosystem.

SPACES currently sits in a historically significant BIPOC LGBTQ+ site. The corner of 29th and Detroit played an important role in the late 90s and early 2000s as a haven for LGBTQ+ people. Relocation and displacement have profoundly transformed this neighborhood in recent years. SPACES is committed to supporting and affirming LGBTQ+ communities and their rights. We further reaffirm our commitment by providing space and opportunities for BIPOC and low-income LGBTQ+ artists, art workers, and audiences.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

SPACES recognizes the land upon which our building resides as the ancestral homeland of the Haudenosaunee. We further acknowledge the thousands of Indigenous people who now call this region home as a result of forced migration, dispossession of ancestral homelands and territories, or other reasons. We affirm their right as past, present, and future caretakers of this land. 

We make this statement recognizing that intentionally or not, we have participated in ongoing Settler Colonialism; a term that is generally recognized to mean the removal, erasure, and supplantation of Indigenous peoples. We commit to beginning the process of working to dismantle the ongoing legacies of Settler Colonialism. 

ANNUAL REPORTS 

  2024 / 2023 / 2022  /  2021  /  2019  /  2018  /  2017  /  2016  /  2015  /  2014