Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments

Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments (SPACES or SPACES Archives) is a non-profit public benefit organization created with an international focus on the study, documentation, and preservation of art environments (or visionary environments) and self-taught, publicly-accessible artistic activity (see self-taught art). Currently based in Aptos, California, SPACES boasts an archive of approximately 35,000 photographs as well as hundreds of books, articles, audio and video tapes/DVDs, and artists’ documents. SPACES has become recognized internationally as the largest and most complete archive on this subject.

SPACES maintains an online index of more than 1,400 art environments around the world, exhibiting its collection of images, documents, and writings, and also providing further reading on the artists and their built environments. The organization also provides resources and best practices on the preservation of threatened sites.

SPACES was organized in 1969 and then formally Incorporated in 1978 by Founding Director Seymour Rosen, a Los Angeles photographer who became interested in the aesthetic genre of art environments after photographing Watts Towers. His images of this iconic artwork – including those of the infamous 1959 "stress-test" that proved the Towers’ stability – resulted in Rosen's first major solo photographic exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1962, titled Simon Rodia's Towers in Watts. Rosen also authored the 1979 book In Celebration of Ourselves.

As the founder of the SPACES organization, Rosen was invited to serve on the board of directors of Raw Vision with its inception, and from its first issue in 1989 contributed often to its pages. In 1992 he was honored by the Folk Art Society of America with their Award of Distinction for his “pioneering work in the field of environmental documentation and preservation.”. This included advocacy such as successfully designating sites for the California State Landmark registry, including Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley and Nitt Witt Ridge in Cambria.

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