Looking Back to 2024, Looking Forward to 2025
Gamespace is on a roll as we skid into 2025.
Exhibition Highlights: The year ended on a high note, culminating with the incomparable Insert Coin: Inside Midway's Arcade Revolution, organized with Josh Tsui at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art (on view through February 15). But it also featured the following amazing exhibits: Vector vs Raster (March 3 - May 12, 2024), Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends (May 19 - June 30, 2024), Alina Nazmeeva: Bug In My Software (July 7 - September 1, 2024), Time Machine Bronzeville (September 8 - October 27, 2024), and Digital Eclipse's The Making of Karateka (November 3 - December 29, 2024).
Attendance: Over 3,500 guests were welcomed throughout the year, doubling last year’s audience. This increase in foot traffic is largely due to our partnership with Cleve Carney Museum of Art for the Insert Coin exhibition.
Shop: We also rolled out new, expanded new print offerings in our shop with quality art from games such as SCHiM, Hades and Prince of Persia.
Press: The media showed up big time for Gamespace in 2024 including a 3-page spread in the Chicago Sun-Times, an interview with CBS Chicago, and a Newcity feature to name a few.
Budget: From a financial perspective, Gamespace squeaked by with a modest surplus. And in 2025, some small adjustments will be made to continue this positive trend and position ourselves for future growth and expansion. There is considerable demand for Gamespace to be rented for birthday parties and other events. To meet this demand, parties will now be available for booking weeknights and Saturday and Sunday mornings and evenings. Gamespace is available to be rented via our third party partner Peerspace.
We are discontinuing the option to airbnb Gamespace downstairs (though upstairs is still available) to maximize our limited square footage for museum purposes. With the exception of large exhibitions with partners such as the Insert Coin project, Gamespace will still maintain smaller exhibits of notable games and game art projects so that the majority of the space can be devoted to the Gamespace history collection. One day we hope to secure a larger space.
Return of Saturday hours: With the shift from airbnb to event rentals, this means that Saturday public hours can return! Public hours will be held from 2-5pm in between parties on Saturdays and Sundays.
Partnerships: This year featured a number of wonderful partnerships. Vector vs Raster benefitted from the insights of pop culture historian Tim Lapetino and Jim Zespy from Logan Arcade. The Chicago Public Library held a companion exhibition of artwork by Philip Mallory Jones for the Time Machine Bronzeville project. And it was a dream to collaborate with the amazing documentary filmmaker Joshua Tsui — who created Insert Coin the film — to curate an exhibition adaptation about Midway in the 1990s at Cleve Carney Museum of Art. A gallery at Gamespace was also named in honor of a fierce advocate for video games in Chicago: the late, great Eric Mittereder.
Staffing: A huge thank you to Gamespace’s audience, artists, lenders, partners and staff especially assistant curator Ethan Johnson, who greets visitors at our front desk and is always ready to discuss video game history; Robbie Komen and Skip Hansen keep our games in good working order; and Matt, Christy and Kevin from Open House Contemporary, our amazing co-hosts for rentals.
We’re always open to partnership and ideas that help with sustainability so don’t hesitate to reach out to chicagogamespace@gmail.com with yours!
Thanks for believing in our mission in 2025 as we look forward to celebrating the 5th anniversary of Chicago Gamespace this September!
Jonathan Kinkley
Owner/Curator
Chicago, January 2, 2025