Closed SFAI Campus to Be Converted into Artist Residency Center

The campus of the former San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) will now play host to a privately funded nonprofit arts center, the California Academy of Studio Arts (CASA). A residency program there will bring in 30 emerging artists each year.

Backed by philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs, the center will bring in artists to further develop their studio practices, matriculating them through an unaccredited program after one year. Powell Jobs purchased the Chester Street campus last year for $30 million.

As at accredited art schools, the residency will offer participating artists access to private studios and shared work spaces, as well as professional mentors. The center will not charge tuition fees.

SFAI, one of the nation’s oldest art schools, suspended educational activities in 2022 and later filed for bankruptcy after a failed deal with a neighboring institution, the University of San Francisco (USF), that would see its debts and programs transferred through a merger.

The school had been plagued by financial troubles in the years leading up to the pandemic. In 2020, that the school announced it would cease admissions and degree-granting programs due to decreased enrollment and growing debt.

In March of last year, the Bay Area arts scene breathed a sigh of relief when Powell Jobs, a high-power art collector, said she would rehabilitate SFAI’s closed campus.

A spokesperson for the new center said the model is based on that of other influential art schools like Black Mountain College. That experimental North Carolina school, which closed in 1957, kept its campus small but played an outsize role in contributing to the arts, with Ruth Asawa, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, and many others passing through it.

The curriculum for CASA will include a series of seminars led by the center’s director, Abbye Churchill, and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

The physical site is now undergoing a renovation. A state-protected Diego Rivera mural from 1931 on the campus will ultimately be open to the public.