SPACES (Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments: spacesarchives.org) is a California-based non-profit archive established in 1978 to identify, document, and advocate for the preservation of large-scale art environments, and self-taught art.
SPACES recently launched a beautiful digital archive of more than 1,400 art environments around the world, and the organization is regularly digitizing archival holdings, soliciting new documentation and writing
about the sites, and sharing resources and updates on the preservation and conservation of threatened vernacular art sites, such as Rev. Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens, Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain, or Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers.
The SPACES archive is a wonderful resource for the art history classroom, for your own research on the subject of art environments — or in connection to allied fields like vernacular architecture, historic preservation, folklore, anthropology, material culture studies, and museum studies.
Please be sure to explore the Online Collection, the Preservation Toolbox, the SPACES Blog with the latest info on preservation efforts and the exhibition of art environments, and more.
Finally, please consider submitting any site that is not already listed, or donating images you may have taken at some of these wonderful places. Credit is always given, and materials are digitized and cared for in our Aptos, CA archive for perpetuity. Submissions are accepted here:
http://spacesarchives.org/
Browse SPACES here: http://spacesarchives.org
And follow each of the feeds…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/
Contact:
Jennifer Joy Jameson
communications@spacesarchives.
HERITAGES 2025: LONDON Critical Questions – Contemporary Practice 25-27 June, 2025
A little over 25 years ago, the site of this conference, Maritime Greenwich, London, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Home to the first Palladian building in England, the Royal Naval College by Sir Christopher Wren, the National Maritime Museum, the...