SANTA FE, N. Mex. — Until the end of last week, the Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Art (CCA) has showcased contemporary art and film, including arthouse, independent and foreign cinema, its historical bread and butter, for over four decades in the high desert. The closure of the CCA on the evening of Thursday April 6 was abruptly announced and promulgated. A press release announcing the shutdown and local media coverage cited pandemic mandates and protocols, changing patterns of film distribution and consumption, and long-standing fundraising issues as key drivers of the institution’s demise. cultural.
But other reasons — including a pandemic-era exacerbation of the innate structural inequality of the nonprofit philanthropy model, shifting demographics of artists and donors, and a crisis of institutional identity – received less coverage. According to former CCA Deputy Director April Chalay, who held several positions at CCA for more than five years, the issues that led to the center’s closure have been around for a long time.
Citing a list produced by the board of 11 CCA directors over the past 19 years, which she is sure are missing some names due to lax record keeping, Chalay said the CCA has traveled through executive directors at an unsustainable rate over the past two decades.
“A new director every two or three years creates a culture of instability and a huge lack of identity,” Chalay said. Hyperallergic.
Under its last Executive Director and Chief Curator Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota) since July 2021, a beleaguered CCA was thriving programmatically and curatorially. The 2022 show Self-Determined: A Contemporary Inquiry into Native and Indigenous Artists was included in Hyperallergicthe list of Top 50 exhibitions of the year.
Demographic changes have also played a role. “Not many people will say, ‘I don’t like it because it’s getting browner or younger,’ but that’s absolutely what happened when the CCA found out [Dayelle Means]”, Chalay said. “We had people who started criticizing us and saying, ‘Your director is Indigenous and you’re doing an Indigenous show, are you just going to be an Indigenous arts organization? not what I want to give.
Another issue that plagued the CCA was the very nature of nonprofit art grants and donations, namely restricted vs. unlimited donations. As Chalay noted in his interview, most private donations and grants are restricted, meaning they are earmarked for a specific exhibition or program and therefore cannot be used by organizations in the way most likely. more beneficial for long-term sustainability by funding overhead costs, including staff. pay.
“The problem with the traditional nonprofit board model is that it relies on a colonial model of philanthropy based on older white people from wealthy heritages having money and judging an organization large enough to give,” Chalay said. . “We were really hoping to get to the other side of these funding issues so we could give voice to this [conversation] but we couldn’t make it because our council didn’t fundraise.
The CCA closure also reduces the number of cinema spaces dedicated to showing foreign, independent and experimental films in the Santa Fe area to those of anti-profit Cinema without a name and the largely refocused event space at Cinema Jean Cocteau.
Artist Ian Kuali’i (Kanaka Maoli/Shis Inday), whose series Ma Ka Ho’ona’auao Ā Ma Ka Ihe Paha – By education or by spear (2022) was featured in the self-determined exhibition, called the CCA’s closure “a blow to inclusivity in the arts.”
“Rarely have I come across an arts institution that totally supports the vision of the creators it invites into its space without trying to alter it,” Kuali’i said. Hyperallergic. “It is equally rare that we have Indigenous female representation in a contemporary arts leadership position, and I am talking about contemporary arts broadly, not Indigenous/Indigenous contemporary arts… The health of our future generations and communities is deeply linked to representation and visibility.”
