SPACES Archives and Kohler Foundation

In 2017, we celebrated the announcement of SPACES archives partnership with, and move to, the Kohler Foundation, Inc. SPACES staff and board will continue to fulfill our mission of identifying, documenting, collecting information about, and advocating for the preservation of art environments all over the world.

SPACES was informally organized in 1959 and has operated as a formal nonprofit organization since 1978 for the purposes of identifying, documenting, and advocating for the preservation of large-scale art environments. Founding director Seymour Rosen conceived of SPACES as a national (and, later, an international) organization.  After operating out of offices in northern California, now transferred to Wisconsin, it boasts an archives of approximately 35,000 photographs as well as books, articles, audio and video tapes/DVDs, and artists’ documents. After some 5 1/2 decades, SPACES took a new step to enable them to put their collections and resources to even greater use and available to a wider audience. KFI is committing extensive resources to the SPACES mission and archives, and to maintaining the resources to continue to support SPACES’ mission for generations to come. 

SPACES Archives currently houses information on over 1400 art environments from all over the world. There are currently over 800 art environments in the online collection, ready for you to explore. Visit spacesarchives.org and discover the vast world of art environments!