The events are canceled and fell indefinitely. However, this instability has also spread to education. The San Francisco Art Institute announced that due to its financial debt, it is uncertain if the school could continue operating after graduation in May.
On March 23, the school sent an email to all students and school staff, about stop admitting a class of new students for the fall of 2020 as the financial difficulties. Students are going to receive the credit of the 2020 spring semester and graduating students can expect to receive their degrees in May as scheduled. This would lead to layoffs of faculty and staff members.
The school’s president, Gordon Knox, and chair of its board of trustees, Pam Rorke Levy said that the plan of negotiations with “two of the Bay Area’s finest institutions of higher learning” had been stopped as unfolding Covid-19 pandemic. The school promised to continue to find if there is a strategic partnership, but be realistic that this will not happen any time soon in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic.
Although no one mentioned closing the school officially, the drastic will be a blow to the whole American art school. Found in 1871, San Francisco Art Institute is one of the oldest art schools in the continent and the only one that aims to focus on contemporary art. Famous artist alumni such as Annie Leibovitz, Kehinde Wiley, Catherine Opi. Also, the school joined many historical movements like the Bay Area Figurative Movement and Mission School, which present an innovative and enlightened role model to all the art institute in the world.
“Today we as an institution are facing a new set of challenges that will force us to evolve, and in the months and years ahead our goal will be to reinvent ourselves once again, perhaps taking a new form for a new era,” Knox and Levy wrote in their open letter.
Photos © San Francisco Art Institute
