So You Wanna Go to Art School?

When Eli Meza applied to college in 2018, they were looking for a place to study art with an interdisciplinary approach. Mills, still a women’s college at the time, offered Meza exactly what they were looking for: courses they truly cared about, and a community welcoming to trans and nonbinary students.

Plus, the campus was alive with performances, exhibitions and impromptu happenings.

“There was always something to go to,” Meza remembered. “There was always an MFA student doing something with a projector and a synth somewhere on campus.”

Now Meza is part of the last graduating class from an art program that no longer exists.

Seven years ago, high schoolers interested in studying art had numerous higher ed options in the Bay Area to choose from, depending on their grades and willingness to go into debt. But these days, two of those schools have ceased to exist (the San Francisco Art Institute and Mills College, as an independent liberal arts school), and others are struggling to stay afloat (California College of the Arts and Sonoma State). As schools face mounting deficits, art programs are often among the first to be cut.

The instability of the field doesn’t just limit opportunities for aspiring young artists — it puts the entire arts ecosystem in jeopardy. A healthy art scene needs lively art schools and plenty of teaching opportunities to keep artists in the region.

Ultimately, with fewer art programs, smaller numbers of artists like Meza graduate with ties to this place and a desire to make their artistic lives here. Fewer jobs exist for the artists who make up the faculty and staff of those programs. And the creativity we might have once kept in the region drifts away — to larger cities, or more hospitable and affordable places.

You can’t go to Mills or SFAI

On April 6, the Mills College Art Museum opened its final senior art show, featuring work by Meza, Frankie Keenan-Lee, Reed Reed and Sophie. Language of Our Own, tucked into the back corner of what is now the Northeastern University Oakland campus, is a remnant of Mills’ once-plentiful arts offerings, which included experimental music, theater, dance, creative writing and several well-respected MFA programs.

“There was just such a robust and really great faculty here,” Meza said. Professors introduced them to experimental video art, book-making and painting. Now, mail slots labeled with former faculty’s names sit empty in the art department office.

Before Mills merged with Northeastern in 2022, senior shows included as many as 16 artists. The MFA program, which ended with the merger, once graduated an average of 10 artists per year. It was a small department with an outsize influence.

Mills is now a place where Northeastern students pursue interdisciplinary degree programs “positioned at the intersection of technology, healthcare, science, business, and the humanities.” Studio art, design and architecture classes are still offered, but students can no longer graduate with degrees in those fields. In fact, the arts have nearly disappeared from campus.

“The music building was always so lively,” Meza said. “It makes me so sad that there’s never anyone in there.” Working as the assistant studio manager in the photography department, they said, “I’ve been in there by myself all year, pretty much.”

Language of Our Own carries echoes of another final show, put together by five SFAI seniors in the school’s storied Diego Rivera Gallery. In July 2022, the same day as their final crit, news came down that SFAI would not be merging with the University of San Francisco as announced. After more than 150 years in operation, training artists like Kehinde Wiley, Kathryn Bigelow and Barry McGee, the school closed its doors and declared bankruptcy.

In 2024, the vacant Russian Hill campus was purchased by a nonprofit that calls itself the BMA Institute, which is funded by Laurene Powell Jobs and advised by a group of leaders from San Francisco art, dance and music schools.

The BMA Institute has hired an architecture firm to “revitalize” the former SFAI campus. It’s unclear what, exactly, it will become.

“Our new nonprofit has been in the very early stages of transforming the former SFAI campus into an artist space that will nurture both local and international arts communities,” BMA Institute spokesperson PJ Johnson wrote to KQED in late February. “We anticipate being able to share more details about our name, mission, and program later this year.”

“BMA,” he explained, “is more of a placeholder for the entity that will emerge.” It is not an acronym.

Are art programs growing anywhere? After it called off the SFAI merger, USF announced a $15 million donation from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation to expand the school’s art and design facilities, and grow its bachelors and masters programs in visual and performing arts.

So far, the donation has been used to improve upon or pay for existing aspects of USF’s arts programs. An on-campus theater is being renovated and a longtime faculty member now holds an endowed chair. In the fall, the school will fund two or three visiting artist-scholars and three student scholarships.

USF did not mention any plans to offer a BFA or MFA in visual art.

California College of the Arts, the last art school

With SFAI gone, CCA is now the only accredited nonprofit art school in the entirety of Northern California. Enrollment has dropped in recent years; it currently has a student body of 1,295, down by about 30% compared to 2019. In September 2024, the school, facing a deficit of $20 million, laid off 10% of its staff and eliminated numerous open positions.

After leaving its historic Oakland campus in 2022 and building out its San Francisco campus, CCA’s future appeared grim — and remarkably similar to the trajectory SFAI followed after its own expensive expansion into Fort Mason.

But in February 2025, CCA President David Howse announced that the school had raised nearly $45 million in donations — $22.5 million of it coming from the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang Foundation.

“Not only does this help sustain CCA, but it actually is a huge boost to the arts and culture community,” Howse told KQED in February. “It’s not often that we see such investment from the tech world.”

Jen-Hsun Huang is president and CEO of the technology company NVIDIA; the foundation’s donation was originally in NVIDIA stock, which has since been converted to cash. (NVIDIA stock has dropped over 28% in value since the beginning of the year.)

While the foundation’s donation was one of the largest in the school’s history, CCA isn’t necessarily “saved,” as some headlines suggested. “It stabilizes us,” Howse said. Meanwhile, the school is in the process of “reimagining” and enhancing existing programs, and launching new programs that might appeal to prospective students.

“We want to also look beyond what would be seen as a traditional student,” Howse said. “We have extension programs, we’re looking at certificate programs, low-residency programs, so that we are actually available and attractive to a much broader student body base.”

The uncertain state of Sonoma State

An even less-sure bet these days is Sonoma State University, which in January announced an estimated $23.9 million deficit and extensive cuts and layoffs. The elimination of six departments and 23 degrees is now paused until at least May 1, thanks to a temporary restraining order from a Sonoma County judge.

Among the degrees the school hopes to eliminate is the studio art BFA, as well as the entire art history department. Schoolwide, the university plans to cut nearly 50 faculty members, both tenured and adjunct.

Letha Ch’ien, an associate art history professor, is one of them. “I feel cheated,” she said of all the work she did to achieve tenure, usually a job for life. “Why did they put us through that process only to dump us all by email?”

Ch’ien pointed to the chaos and uncertainty the planned cuts have created for students. While Sonoma State has kept its studio art bachelor’s degree, that program currently requires students take at least four art history classes. “They have laid off all the art historians, both tenured and lecturer,” Ch’ien said. “I have asked ‘What is your plan for this?’”

The plan, such as it is, is that students set to graduate by spring 2027 can complete their canceled majors with professors hired back on an ad hoc basis; other students will have to change majors — or transfer schools.

Ch’ien bristled against the idea that art or art history degrees aren’t “career-focused,” as Sonoma State termed the curriculum changes. “I know our graduates are employed,” she said. “They have jobs and they’re happy and fulfilled and they take those skills with them. The idea that art history is not for CSU students infuriates me.”

While schools across the CSU system are facing state budget cuts, none are struggling as spectacularly as Sonoma State. At San Francisco State, Associate Professor Libby Black said enrollment for the School of Art is “actually really healthy right now.”

The School of Art includes 620 students majoring and minoring in art history and studio art, and a two-year MFA program. Two tenure-track professors were hired just last year.

“Everybody that I’ve toured around here, they’re like, ‘Wow, your facilities are really good,’” Black said. “And we’re really affordable.” SF State’s tuition is $8,256 a year, compared to CCA’s $60,864. That relative accessibility means SF State’s art students are far more representative of the state’s demographics.

“We have older students; we have first-generation students; Latinx students; students who work full time; students who are taking care of their own families, or their brothers and sisters, or their parents,” Black said.

Which is great news for the artwork we get to see coming out of SF State. The worry is, what kind of arts landscape are these students graduating into? There certainly aren’t many teaching jobs left for anyone interested in pursuing that path. (In response to state budget cuts and declining enrollment, SF State has laid off nearly all of its faculty on year-to-year contracts.)

And sure, artists don’t necessarily need to go to art school. But art schools are a necessary part of a vibrant arts scene. These graduates go on to create the artworks, projects and spaces that shape our understanding of each other and that shared thing we call culture. While some schools hang on, the field of higher arts education shrinks ever smaller: The local arts ecosystem is shifting in painful, irreversible ways.

“This is going to sound a little woo-woo,” Black said, “but we really need art in the world.”