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When you enter this quiet art space, your footsteps echo back at you, the gleaming wooden floor reflects you, and the art on the walls and easels surrounds you. You've stepped off the busy downtown streets into an early 20th-century art house. It's the Aronoff Gallery, a newly renovated, quietly elegant downtown art space.
After 25 years as an art collector, Condy Beavers decided to share his rotating collection of fine art by opening a storefront gallery with partner Leslie Aronoff. Last December he opened The Aronoff Gallery on Race Street, next door to ArtWorks and across from the Phoenix.
The hardwood floors stretch to the building's rear wall, where atextile loft surrounds visitors in fine fibers. Vaulted ceilings with elaborate molding complete the feeling of warm luxury. The art, of course, is first rate, a constantly changing collection of 19th- and early 20th-century painting, sculpture, sketches and furniture from Europe, Latin America and the United States.
The couple spent nearly a year renovating the space, which was most recently a dentist's office. Drop ceilings hid the glorious molding, and linoleum covered the wooden planks — treasures obscured. Now Beavers and Aronoff live on the second floor in a beautifully renovated loft.
"We wanted a downtown location," Beavers says, noting that he and Aronoff sought a space where they could live and run a gallery in the heart of the city. "We're both downtownpeople."
The Aronoff Gallery
Address: 807 Race St., Downtown
First opened: December 2003
Hours: Noon-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday or by appointment
Next exhibit: Exhibits constantly rotate
Contact: [email protected], 513-621-7400
