Rethinking space for artists at Artspace

Artspace executive director Leslie Menagh is calling it a “facelift,” as the downtown art gallery premieres its new look this weekend during the First Friday Art Crawl on May 1. The gallery now has a new retail space selling art supplies, a renewed focus on providing studio space to members, and brand-new moveable walls that will allow the gallery to be shaped and re-shaped into the future. 

This comes as the 52-year-old gallery confronts a shifting local arts landscape and ongoing funding challenges, and continues to consider how best to serve its evolving membership.

Founded in 1974 by a group of artists, including David Bierk and his then-wife Kathleen, Artspace was one of the first artist-run centres in Canada. Artist-run centres, unlike traditional private galleries, are nonprofit organizations founded and managed by the artists who work and exhibit there. Artspace’s activities are directed by its paid artist members and its board of directors.

“Artist-run centres are, almost by definition, this thing that morphs to the shape of its community,” says Menagh. “The people who show up at Artspace, they characterize this space.”

Indeed, Artspace has evolved many times over the last 52 years. When it was founded, it was a multi-disciplinary organization, supporting dance, theatre, film, performance art, and poetry, as well as visual art – now its primary focus. It’s had six different locations around Peterborough, including an extended occupancy in pre-renovations Market Hall, before settling into its current home on Aylmer Street.

The space has faced significant challenges in recent years. 2020 brought both the departure of longtime curator Jon Lockyer and the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the gallery to close its doors multiple times, and which continues to re-shape the downtown and the local arts scene.

By the time Menagh was brought on as the gallery’s new director in 2022, the organization was facing significant funding pressure. Notes board chair Janette Platana, “We haven’t had an increase in federal funding in seven years, as costs have gone up. So we had to decide how to fit activities into the budget, and that meant changing the space.”

Then came the closure of Victory Art Supply, the region’s only independent art supplies store. It was yet another sign of the changing local arts landscape, but it also turned out to be an opportunity for Artspace. One of Artspace’s members realized that Victory still had stock they needed to sell off, and there was the opportunity for a partnership. 

The appropriately named Victory Lap pop-up shop was Artspace’s first foray into art supplies retail, and it was very successful, helping bring Artspace back into the black and paving the way for a new revenue stream for the gallery. Menagh then got in touch with Art Factory in Renfrew, who were looking to open a satellite location in Peterborough. A deal was made, and Art Factory now has a permanent retail space within Artspace, taking over the auxiliary space known as Gallery II.  

“It will be generating revenue for us,” says Menagh, “which is great, but now we have to get really creative and more organized about how we use less space.”

At the same time, Menagh saw it as an opportunity to improve the accessibility of the gallery and reorganize its offices and archive space. “It’s a design question that’s been rolling around my head. How do we literally shape this space so that it’s as flexible, as versatile, as responsive as possible?”

This has led to major renovations in the gallery space, including knocking down the wall that separated the gallery and offices, renovating the kitchen and washroom to make them more physically accessible, installing a new sign on the front of the building, and adding four large moveable walls on casters. 

These walls allow artists to dramatically re-shape the space for each new exhibition, opening up new possibilities for showing art. Walls can also be used to temporarily segment off parts of the gallery for workshops, office space, or rental events. The new Members’ Studio initiative will encourage artists to come in and take over the gallery space (or a temporarily walled-off part of it) to use as an arts studio.

The new system will be on display this weekend. For First Friday on May 1, Artspace will be launching Memory Crimes / Les Crimes de Mémoire / 記憶犯罪, a new exhibition by Edward FuChen Juan, in one half of the gallery, and previewing the Members’ Studio in the other half. (Artspace’s Book + Zine Fest also returns this weekend, though it’s taking place at the Peterborough Public Library.)

Menagh admits it can be a struggle to find solutions that satisfy Artspace’s diverse membership, which includes members dating back to the start of Artspace in the 1970s as well as brand-new artists. 

“This year in particular,” says Menagh, “we’ve wanted to generate conversation and ask visitors to think about belonging. Places like Artspace are going through transitions and we’re asking ourselves, how do you create a space where people feel that they belong?”

This article was updated on May 1, 2026 with corrected information about the founders of Artspace.