The struggling San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) has filed for bankruptcy, as first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. The school, whose campus is home to an iconic, site-specific Diego Rivera mural from 1931, had been struggling financially for years before. his 2020 decision to serve the current student body through the start and end of admissions and programs of study in the future. SFAI’s administration and board members have repeatedly tried to save the school by raising funds, exploring partnerships and even given the sale of the Rivera mural.
SFAI filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 19. In order to repay its hundreds to millions of dollars in debt, the school is forced to liquidate all of its assets. Its creditors include, but are not limited to, the owners of SFAI; a pest control company; AT&T; the University of San Francisco; and each laid-off faculty member who owes severance pay.
Both inside and outside the school, some attribute the school’s failure to declining enrollment, prohibitive tuition rates, and the board’s mismanagement of finances, as well as to an extravagant $14 million debt-inducing expansion on a satellite campus at Pier 2 on the San Francisco Bay. in 2017. The satellite campus closed mid-2020 in the midst of the pandemic and began looking for sub-tenants to take over the remaining 50 years of the lease.
In 2020, SFAI has raised approximately $4 million in funds to stay afloat and serve its tenured faculty and remaining student body until the start, and leaders were excited to find other funding and partnership opportunities to protect the school’s legacy. The University of California Board of Regents stepped in and repaid SFAI’s debts, effectively become the new owner of the establishment and thwart its foreclosure. In early 2021, the school was again desperate to repay 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) which was last evaluated. to $50 million, only to encounter severe backlash from school union staff members as well as San Francisco residents, many of whom pushed for the city to recognize the mural as a landmark.
In a last ditch effort to persevere, SFAI explored a partnership with the University of San Francisco which was to be solidified in early 2022 but ended up failingresulting in the school’s decision to officially closed permanently on July 15 that year and reorienting itself as a non-profit organization to protect its name, history and archives. “After years of planning and immeasurable sacrifice by our students, faculty and staff, it is deeply sad that we are faced with this current outcome,” said Lonnie Graham, then chairman of the board. administration and alumnus of photography, in the school’s official statement on the move. permanently close.
THE San Francisco Chronicle reported that Rivera’s mural will remain for the time being and may end up in a public gallery later. SFAI has not yet responded to Hyperallergicrequest for comment.
