In early February the editors of October got in touch to ask if I might write something for their Spring issue on the effects of the closure of the art schools in the Bay Area on the community of the city—with the apologetic note that it would be due by the end of the month. Over the following three weeks I spoke with people linked to California College of the Arts and San Francisco Art Institute, and wrote a 6000-word essay titled “Fake Estates,” which was published a couple weeks ago.
Here’s the abstract:
A contribution to October's series Arts Communities at Risk, “Fake Estates” explores the systemic collapse of intersecting art worlds in the San Francisco Bay Area in the wake of the announced closure of California College of the Arts, its campus and facilities having been acquired by Nashville-based Vanderbilt University. The essay traces the demise of the 120-year-old art college to larger trends—the so-called “demographic cliff” augured by higher-education statisticians, a shrinking population of international students during the second Trump administration, and hapless gestures at incorporating artificial intelligence into an art school curriculum. It also narrates CCA's disastrous campus expansion project, which was funded by staggering debt, and a penchant among the school's trustees for blurring the lines between financial responsibility and private gain. It situates this travesty within a widening crisis in the region's art galleries and museums, many of which have announced diminished programs or hours, layoffs, and closures in recent years, and assesses recently announced alternative institutions—Art + Water, the Further Triennial, and the California Academy of Studio Arts—that hope to fill growing cracks in the city's arts ecosystem. In all these developments the author finds the pervasive distorting logic of financial speculation: the valuing of potential assets over existing cultures.
It is, unfortunately, paywalled—I myself cannot download it—but I have word that October will make it free in the coming weeks, as part of a larger sharing / celebration of the Art Communities in Crisis series.
You can also email me for a copy; I’m happy to share.
