ALBUQUERQUE — The cultural landscape of northern New Mexico changed last month when the board of directors of the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe (CCA) voted to permanently close the organization. The move resulted in the loss of jobs for 14 full-time arts workers, including the center’s first Indigenous executive director, Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota), and the closure of an arts space that served Santa Fe for more than four decades. Five weeks later, with a board-initiated fundraising campaign securing pledges and donations of more than $300,000, CCA reopened in a purely cinematic capacity on Thursday, May 11.
The CCA’s closure was informed by a combination of factors, including pandemic mandates and protocols, changing distribution and cinema consumption models, changing artist and donor demographics, and challenges fundraising that stems from the structural inequity of the not-for-profit philanthropic model. In an interview with Hyperallergic in April, former CCA deputy director April Chalay also spoke of a “lack of identity” exacerbated by turnover in the organization’s leadership team.
The new CCA is led by Managing Director Paul Barnes, a retired documentary film editor and former Chairman of the Board. Along with film critic David N. Meyer and No Name Cinema founder Justin Clifford Rhody, Barnes is co-hosting the To look closer series of film screenings and conversations that mark the reopening of the centre.
In the wake of Means’ leadership – which many have hailed as forward-thinking and which has included film as just one aspect of a multi-faceted contemporary art exhibition and programming – the community is asking questions about the how the CCA will deal with its history and create its future.
Artist Hoka Skenandore (Oneida, Oglala Lakota, Luiseno) views collaborations with the CCA as critical to building his career and wonders how the center’s historic role in providing opportunities for artists of color and other marginalized identities will figure into his future.
“My question now is, what will the CCA look like? Its world-class director and curator are out of place, which sounds like the same old institutional whitewashing,” Skenandore said. Hyperallergic. He cited the recent resignation of the director of the National Museum of African Art from the Smithsonian Institution. Ngaire Blankenbergwho only held the post for two years before announcing his departure in March.
Continuing under the CCA banner, the center retains an association with a storied history – both positive and negative – and a stated mission to “celebrate[ing] creativity in the arts, humanities and sciences by generating transformative experiences. The CCA now exists without an executive director and Barnes faces an uphill battle to revive the center based on its only remaining offering, a theater that lost 72% of its box office revenue between 2019 and 2022. With a reduced team and a dearth of administration, development, and marketing support, former deputy director Chalay believes that establishing a film-centric CCA as a sustainable business is unlikely, but would require thinking outside of the box- office, a long-term angel investor, or both.
According to Chalay, a minimum cinema staffing will cost CCA$304,000 per year, a figure that only covers salaries, not costs such as rent, utilities, insurance and building or grounds maintenance. . Another consideration of cinema operations is the substantial royalty costs paid to distributors, which Chalay says ranges from 35-40% of ticket sales. Since grants to the CCA for visual arts programming are limited, the center will need to secure strong revenue – more than 28% of pre-pandemic ticket sales – to pay for ongoing operating costs.
In response to speculation that the shutdown was an intentional effort to oust CCA leadership, Chalay dismisses the notion of an organized conspiracy, but not that of incompetence.
“It was more incompetence and an inability to support or listen to the professionals they hired to do this job,” Chalay said. Hyperallergic. When the success of the fundraising campaign forced the board to make a decision, Chalay suspects its members reverted to their frequently voiced problem-solving refrain of downsizing to “just a theater.” Although the center’s own data does not support this solution, Chalay notes that it is a simple model that speeds up decision-making.
