The ailing San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) has filed for bankruptcy, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. The school, whose campus boasts an iconic and site-specific Diego Rivera mural from 1931, had been struggling financially for years prior to its 2020 decision to serve the current student body through commencement and cease admissions and degree programs moving forward. SFAI’s administration and board members made multiple attempts to save the school through fundraising, exploring partnerships, and even considering the sale of the Rivera mural.
The SFAI filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protections on April 19. In order to repay its hundreds to millions of dollars’ worth of debts, the school is obligated to liquidate the entirety of its assets. Its creditors include but are not limited to SFAI’s landlords; a pest control company; AT&T; the University of San Francisco; and every laid-off faculty member that is owed severance.
Within and outside the institution, some blame the school’s failure on declining enrollments, prohibitively high tuition rates, and the board’s mismanagement of finances as well as an extravagant, $14M debt-inducing expansion to a satellite campus at Pier 2 on the San Francisco Bay in 2017. The satellite campus closed in mid-2020 amidst the pandemic and began searching for subleasers to take over the remaining 50 years of the lease.
In 2020, SFAI raised about $4M in funds to stay afloat and serve its tenured faculty and remaining student body through commencement, and leaders were excited to find other opportunities for funding and partnerships to protect the school’s legacy. University of California’s Board of Regents swooped in and paid off SFAI’s debts, effectively becoming the institution’s new landlord and thwarting its foreclosure. By the beginning of 2021, the school was desperate once again to pay off its multi-million dollar debt and explored the opportunity to sell Diego Rivera’s “The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City” (1931) that was last appraised at $50M, only to be met with severe backlash from the school’s union staff members as well as San Francisco’s residents, many of whom pushed for the city to recognize the mural as a landmark.
As a last-ditch effort to persevere, SFAI explored a partnership with the University of San Francisco that was slated to be solidified in early 2022 but eventually fell through, resulting in the school’s decision to officially close for good on July 15 that year and re-orient itself as a nonprofit organization to protect its name, history, and archives. “After years of planning and immeasurable sacrifice by our students, faculty, and staff, it is profoundly lamentable that we are faced now with this present outcome,” then-Board Chair and photography alum Lonnie Graham said in the school’s official statement about the move to close permanently.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Rivera’s mural would remain for now and it could end up in a public gallery down the line. SFAI has not yet responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment.
0 Commentaires