Farewell to San Francisco Art Institute — a casualty of real estate speculation disguised as higher education

July 15, San Francisco Art Institute administration put out a press release announcing the closure of the 151-year-old college. The closure resulted in the layoffs of the handful of non-tenured faculty remaining after previous rounds of cuts and layoffs amid continuous financial turmoil in the previous years, as speculative real estate deals set in motion under former SFAI president Charles Desmarais (who later decamped to become the San Francisco Chronicle’s art critic, after failing to raise the funds he’d promised) left the college deep in the hole. An acquisition by University of San Francisco fell through, apparently sealing SFAI’s fate.

SEIU 1021 members at SFAI sounded the alarm early and often about the prospects the ill-fated Fort Mason campus expansion (a $15 million loan for renovations, taken out on the strengths of the value of the Russian Hill campus, that the trustees promised to fundraise to pay off but never did), but many years of financial mismanagement, speculation, and self-dealing among the board of trustees and administration left the school in shambles. Students are left with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt and credits that don’t necessarily transfer to other colleges and universities.

Unfortunately, SFAI is not the only college mixing real estate speculation with higher education. This practice leaves other Bay Area institutions, including California College of the Arts, vulnerable to a similar fate.

SEIU 1021 will continue calling this behavior out where we see it occurring as we fight for fair pay, job security, and improved working conditions for non-tenured faculty and staff. We remain concerned about the uncertain fate of the famed Diego Rivera fresco, The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City, which belongs to SFAI but is housed in a building now owned by the University of California; SFAI will lose the mural if it loses or defaults on its lease. Given recent history, there is ample cause to worry that SFAI will fail to protect this invaluable piece of Mexican art history as it has failed to protect its students, faculty, staff, and legacy.

You can read more about the closure of SFAI here.