This week, the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco announced plans to close by the end of the 2026-2027 school year. The CCA campus will then be owned by Vanderbilt University.
Citing CCA’s longstanding financial problems, including “demographic shifts and a persistent structural deficit,” CCA President David C. Howse called the plan “a decisive act of stewardship.”
Shortages? How is this possible? San Francisco is rich with millionaires. It often has the highest number of billionaires anywhere. How does one of the richest cities in the world lose its last and oldest progressive art school? Intentionally.
I taught at several art schools in the Bay Area, including CCA, before moving to the DC area in 2019. From 2015 to 2017, I was named Scholar in Residence at CCA’s Center for Art + Public Life. Art and activism have been the focus of my work for years.
I first wrote about San Francisco’s wealth inequality and artist exodus for KQED in 2014. The art scene has always struggled to attract technological wealth, and today’s crypto kings have yet to emerge as philanthropists defending the arts or freedom of expression.
The loss of CCA must be viewed in relation to the staggering wealth disparities and lack of social investment, perpetuated primarily by the technology sector, much of which maintains close alliances with the current leadership in Washington, DC. The wealth indifference that has plagued San Francisco for so long is now a systemic threat to the national ecosystem.
These connections are reflected in sweeping changes aimed at dismantling the social safety net and cultural landscape. Last year, when funding was cut for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the domino effect decimated initiatives across the country.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting was recently dissolved and the fate of PBS and NPR now hangs in the balance. Pay attention to who is affected by these losses: working-class people of all stripes, children, veterans, people with disabilities, marginalized and vulnerable communities. The list goes on and does not include oligarchs.
While it is difficult to follow the daily pronouncements from Washington, DC aimed at restricting freedom of expression, the tech sector’s relative silence on these changes is equally alarming, especially given the supposed values of creativity, experimentation and innovation. Meanwhile, the most influential technology headquarters are equipped with astonishing private art collections that rival those of public museums.
As San Francisco’s last remaining and oldest private art and design school—CCA will be 120 years old when it goes under—the institution has been a vital stakeholder in art history and, by extension, American history. I spoke with Shalini Agrawal, my former director of CCA’s Center for Art + Public Life, to get her opinion. Professor Agrawal, formerly an associate professor in critical ethnic studies and interdisciplinary studies, with a 17-year track record at CCA, reflected on the losses and the possibilities that could remain open.
“CCA always brought in the most progressive artists and thinkers into the departments I worked in… There was just a lot of excitement in bringing in different thinkers,” she told me. “The Bay Area has always been a hub for creative thinking and social justice. As creative thinkers, we also solve difficult problems – I hope something [new] will come out of this… maybe something from the grassroots.”
In the parlance of West Coast arts schools, the grassroots is the gold standard for excellence—and historically, community organizing at the grassroots level has been essential to creating change in the United States. Barack Obama’s candidacy for president was secured early by $5 in campaign funds. Grassroots actions created change, and they can do it again. 2028 is on the horizon.
The absence of CCA will have a far-reaching impact that will be difficult to quantify. What calculations can be made to demonstrate a loss of imagination? CCA has always attracted local, national and international students – and teaching is like spreading seeds in the wind, knowing that art and ideas can take root anywhere. My students were often involved in social justice issues, deeply invested in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and always focused on building community. CCA’s legacy includes countless talented creatives, all of whom are immensely dangerous to the status quo because of their ability to imagine an expanded future.
Artist emeritus and CCA professor Chris Johnson is retiring this year after 48 years of teaching at the college, dating back to the days when it was called California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC). “I was preparing for what I thought would probably be my last undergraduate class,” he wrote on Facebook. “I just thought the school would always be there, with all the inspiring growth it provided. It’s all those meaningful conversations and moments of encouragement and insight that will be missed.”
After learning of CCA’s plans for students graduating next year, Johnson added, “After that, we will all have to come to terms with the enormous changes in what it means to study the arts in Northern California.”
The lack of support that has resulted in CCA’s closure feels like a betrayal perpetuated by the San Francisco Bay Area’s wealthiest residents, who may also be part of the struggle for democratic values unfolding before us today, but I trust that the University’s past and present communities will deliver on the basic promise that remains in San Francisco.
The names on the walls may change, but I still believe in artists, and I will never give up on the West Coast. Si se puedeas we learn to say at school. American labor leader and feminist activist Dolores Huerta said it first, President Barack Obama said it last, and I’ll say it again: yes, we can.
