RESILIENCE: Looking Back, Looking Forward with Pita Brooks, Executive Director at SPACES

A cornerstone of Cleveland’s art scene, SPACES–the artists’ residency center and exhibition space in Ohio City–goes into 2026 with new leadership. The organization has a rich and storied history of showing local and global artists, and a deep commitment to experimentation as a historically artist-run space. SPACES received wide recognition during the FRONT Triennial in 2018 and 2022 under the leadership of Christina Vassallo, hitting a new peak a year later when it was chosen to represent the United States at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale under the direction of Tizziana Baldenebro. Fana Gebreyesus was hired to follow Baldenebro in March 2024, but served for less than a year.

After the quick change, Cleveland native Pita Brooks was contracted early in 2025 to manage operations, and then hired as executive director starting in December 2025. She’s long been a familiar face at the organization, having exhibited there as an artist and served as a volunteer. [Her partner Kristin Rogers served on the board from 2011 to 2025, and was board president from 2020 to 2022. He stepped down in 2025 while Brooks was on contract.] Besides her work as an artist, Brooks has plenty of administrative and curatorial experience, having held operations and recruitment posts at moCa Cleveland and the Cleveland Institute of Art, and most recently as the executive director of Akron Soul Train. She and Rogers run newsense gallery out of their Lakewood home. Her ebullience and earnest determination are infectious. I sat with Brooks to talk about her strategy and vision for the gallery’s future, which is freshly filled to the brim with upcoming residencies and exhibitions. It was instantly obvious how her unflinching pragmatism and visionary passion for Cleveland’s artists made her the right woman to right this ship. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. –SF

Sarah Frisbie: Thank you for taking the time to be here. You just started your new role, correct?

Pita Brooks: I’ve been at SPACES since February, first on a contract basis, then as director of operations from May. The board appointed me executive director in December.

SF: How’s the homecoming?

PB: I never moved to work in Akron, but I think of this region—Akron, Cleveland, Kent, and even Oberlin—as one large region. So it doesn’t quite mark a return to Cleveland, but I’m also happy to be now six minutes from my home! The SPACES community has been welcoming, and the board very receptive. Their openness has allowed me to bring my daughter to work when needed, easing the balance between her medical needs and my responsibilities as executive director. This support enables me to be fully present for both my family and the organization, and reflects the kind of leadership I hope more institutions will embrace.

SF: That is indeed lovely! Between the local focus of SPACES and the broader focus that came to the gallery after the Biennale, how are you balancing that with the shifts in the leadership and the other transitions that have occurred?

PB: There’s always been global attention at SPACES because of the SWAP World Artist Program and then the Biennale. It was an honor to bring Everlasting Plastics [which was created for the 2023 Venice Biennale, and then traveled to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh] home, but that was a big show with a lot of work, and it may have had some part to play in this quick transition of staffing. SPACES really needed someone to come in and say, “where can we build? How can we take what we’ve learned and apply it forward?” We need to think about maintaining that level of attention while elevating the dialogue around art both regionally and internationally. I also want us to be this really accessible space. I’m trying to think about balancing the SPACES of the past with SPACES of the future.

SF: How are you approaching your role with these transitions in mind?

PB: First, our strategic planning process will wrap up this March. I want SPACES to remain an artist-centered organization that continues to take creative risks. We’re asking artists to come in and be risk-takers, but then we don’t do the same thing and look inward. I also want to lay building blocks that allow someone else to come in after me and pick up, because there is a large loss of information that happens when people leave.

SF: I would love to hear more about your background. Which experiences prepared you the most [for this role]?

PB: My path has been really experiential. I have a BA in fine arts and art history from Hiram College. I also enrolled in a graduate program at Case Western Reserve University in Nutrition and Dietetics, but stopped [pursuing that] when my daughter was born. The nonprofit operations, finance, and development work weren’t in my background directly, so I sought them out and completed an arts management certificate from New York University. But mostly, it was being embedded in regional nonprofit organizations. I learned about programming and visitor experience and day-to-day operations. Being curious, being willing to ask for help, and finding mentors are the most critical parts of developing your skills. You have to problem-solve in real time, and that only happens when you’re doing the hands-on learning.

SF: Relationships are perennially important, especially as our understanding of what skills are helpful is constantly changing. You’re the first executive director at SPACES in a while to hail from Northeast Ohio. What do think your local knowledge can bring to SPACES?

PB: An obvious one would be potential collaborations. I’ve built a lot of relationships over the years in the arts community and beyond. But I also know some of the drawbacks to the area and to the perceptions that people have of organizations in Cleveland. I like that because it presents challenges. I always think, “okay, what’s the problem, and how do we solve it?”

SF: That mindset would be especially crucial working on such a broad scale, but also trying to spread the Cleveland gospel [chuckles] of the artists and the great things that we have here as well.

PB: That’s another thing! Cleveland is an incredible city. I grew up here. That age-old slogan, The Mistake on the Lake? No way. It’s the best place to live. It’s the best place to work. I love the arts and I love Cleveland.

SF: Something for everyone, and especially if you’re in the arts! Before you started as ED, what things were in the works at SPACES?

PB: There had been some exhibitions that weren’t fully planned yet. We were not open for the first six months until June, and then we hosted our first artist-in-residence, who was local [George Harb and Leila Khoury]. Then we pushed Everlasting Plastics up a little bit. We called the pending artists-in-residence and moved them into 2026 [Steve Parker, ọmọlolú Refilwe Bàbátúndé, and Yelaine Rodriguez], and then we’re going to move into a new residency program in 2027, The Echo Residency.

SF: What work were you doing [for SPACES] before you became the executive director?

PB: Mostly operations work. When I arrived, SPACES was down to one full-time staff member, our visitor experience coordinator. I’ve always been involved in SPACES in some capacity…I was a volunteer here; I exhibited here as an artist, so I understood the cycle of SPACES’ exhibitions, but I didn’t know all of our inner workings. We were still doing a lot of things on paper when I arrived, so I looked into new software. I was trying to think operationally about how we could work efficiently with less people, but also build a team. We built out our installation team contact list, and brought on a part-time gallery and visitor assistant, our curatorial coordinator, and an intern. Building more capacity is probably next. And finishing up the strategic plan.

SF: What exhibitions are in the works now?

PB: So many good ones! Steve Parker, whose exhibition Fight Song closes on April 18, graduated from Oberlin College in math and music and now lives in Texas and teaches. He is an installation and sound artist, and he reconfigures marching band equipment. His work has to do with injury, football, and healing. For the exhibition, his composed song will be playing, and then viewers can put on an EEG monitor, and their brainwaves will become part of the composition. The equipment will be suspended in air like a moving marching band. For five Saturdays, local performance creatives will be performing in the space—a collaborative response to his work [RA Washington, Ben Eberle (AKA Ben Wretch), Marcia Custer, Uno Lady, and Kisha Nicole Foster]. Then we have two other artists in residence, ọmọlolú Refilwe Bábátúndé [exhibiting May 5–June 27] and Yelaine Rodriguez [September 11–October 17]. We’re also doing a members show in collaboration with ArtsPass, a multi-organization membership program [on view July 17–August 22]. If you’re a member of Zygote Press, Praxis Fiber Workshop, the Morgan Conservatory, or SPACES, you will be able to exhibit your work for a show and sale in 2026. I’m very excited about it. We’ve been an ArtsPass participating organization for a few years, but this year we’re really focusing on that. We’re around to create and provide resources to artists. I want us to be that resource, and a public forum for artists to explore and experiment.

SF: So, what’s your vision?

PB: Resilience. We’ve been around for fifty years. I want to be around for another fifty. We are a keystone art organization in Cleveland, and it’s important that we’re here. I want us to be artist-first and creative in our programming. I also want to be grounded in our systems and our care for people who make the work possible: staff, artists, community members who take the time to see the work. I want to be curious; I want to be a good listener; I want to be a good observer and a good community partner. It’s all very people-oriented. If I’m meeting with a donor, a visitor, an artist, or an organization in Cleveland, I want to approach it with care.

SF: You’re distilling it all down to what really matters about art.

PB: I love the ideas, but the curatorial vision can come from my staff; it doesn’t have to come from me. I can focus more on leading the organization transparently, with intention, while elevating the arts ecosystem in Cleveland. Those are the grand visions.

SF: You’re an artist, correct?

PB: I was a painting major at Hiram, but I consider myself a mixed media artist. And I do have a lot of photography experience.

SF: How do you think that affects your perspective in roles like this one?

PB: As an arts administrator and full-time mother, I get less time in my studio than I would like, so I have to think about it more as having that creative ability to problem solve. I’m willing to be flexible, and sometimes you get a happy accident. I think it’s okay to fail: if it doesn’t work, try something else. All artists do that. I also understand the work an artist might put into something. I don’t think of arts administration necessarily as an artistic practice but it’s more closely aligned than people think.

SF: We are in a new year. What are your intentions?

PB: Take real risks. Support SPACES in a way that makes it a stable, thoughtful, future-facing institution. If you’re asking me what I want to do personally? [laughing] I want to figure out a strong work-life balance, and I want to create that for my staff. But for SPACES? To continue to create connections, get us back out there, build stability, and move forward with our strategic plan.

SF: Love it! And don’t we all with the work-life balance? [both laugh] I’m not good at it.

PB: I’m really not, but I try.

SF: It’s all a work in progress. It’s that artist mindset.

PB: That’s right. [laughing] How many openings can I fit in tonight? I’m gonna make it to all three!

SF: Been there. [laughing] Thank you so much for taking the time. I’m really excited to see what you do with SPACES. It’s a favorite of mine.

PB: Thank you, and I’m excited to see what you write.

SF: Well, of course, we’re all very excited about what’s coming next.

Sarah Frisbie is a CAN Journal Broadening the Conversation fellow, currently in the PhD art history program at Case Western Reserve University.