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The Plain Dealer | Steven Litt  |  January 20, 2019

'Wilderness years' are over at Spaces, a lively, artist-driven gallery and incubator on a roll

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The wilderness years at Spaces appear to be very much over.

The small, 41-year-old nonprofit cultural organization, whose mission is to nurture and show experimental work by emerging and mid-career contemporary visual artists in Cleveland and around the world, is showing serious signs of maturity, stability and growth.

It has a new home, a redesigned website, a bigger-than-ever budget approaching $1 million, and two hefty new programs enabling it to hand out $85,000 in grants to 15 artists this year.

On top of all that, Spaces has been mounting a steady stream of exhibitions that have reached consistently high levels of quality, pushing attendance from roughly 5,000 to 9,000 a year.

Memorable exhibits over the past two years have included “On Exile,” a 70-minute video by Wisconsin-based artist Jose Carlos Teixeira on the lives of Cleveland refugees from Syria, Sudan, Somalia... Read On