SOMArts to Gather SF Arts Community During ‘State of Emergency’

In recent months, SOMArts Executive Director Maria Jenson has routinely found herself huddled in small groups, debriefing on street corners.

It was always after an arts community meeting organized by the city, she explains. Attendees showed up hoping to ask questions about Mayor Lurie’s plan to merge the city’s three arts agencies. Would grant disbursement change? Would available funding shrink? Artists and arts administrators went to these events looking for civic discourse and real dialogue.

“But what happened after each of the meetings I attended is that we left feeling rather unfulfilled,” Jenson says. Hence the hurried corner debriefings.

If the city wasn’t going to provide a forum for these conversations, SOMArts would, Jenson and her board decided. On Friday, Feb. 13, the cultural center will host a community convening they’re calling “Artists Live Here.” All are welcome; the event will follow an “unconference” format, a participant-driven way to capture topics and conversations as they unfold over the course of four hours.

“This is a state of emergency and urgency,” Jenson says. “It’s not a moment to continue to have these very, almost curated civic meetings.”

The San Francisco arts scene has experienced major blows in recent weeks. On Jan. 13, the 119-year-old California College of the Arts, Northern California’s last remaining nonprofit art and design school, announced it would close at the end of the 2026–2027 school year. Less than two weeks later, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (MCCLA), founded in 1977, shuttered indefinitely due to financial crisis. These sudden announcements came after a spate of gallery and nonprofit art space closures at the end of 2025.

“The infrastructure that sustains creative life is eroding faster than policy and philanthropy can respond,” the “Artists Live Here” event page proclaims. “If we don’t have this conversation now, we may not get another chance.”

Taking matters into their own hands is very much in keeping with the historical role of San Francisco’s seven neighborhood cultural centers, which provide accessible arts spaces, classes, exhibitions and other programming. In addition to the MCCLA and SOMArts, the city’s cultural centers include the African American Art and Culture Complex, the American Indian Cultural Center, the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Bayview Opera House Ruth Williams Memorial Theatre, and the Queer Cultural Center. Only four — now three — have physical spaces.

Friday’s convening comes as SOMArts is itself facing an uncertain financial future. “We received a 10% cut for this fiscal year, which we didn’t learn was going to happen until way after we normally prepare our annual budget,” Jenson explains. At the most recent Arts Commission meeting, a budget presentation shared big-picture numbers, but not the detailed breakdown that will help Jenson, her staff and board make plans for SOMArts’ future.

“What is it going to be this year? Is it a 2% cut? Is it a 10% cut, is it more?” she asks. “That is instability right there.”

Meanwhile, major changes to San Francisco’s arts agencies are already underway. The cultural affairs director of the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC) announced his retirement on Feb. 2, less than week after the mayor posted the job listing for the city’s first executive director of arts and culture, a role that will oversee the still-undefined merger of the SFAC, Grants for the Arts and the Film Commission.

In its final report, the Commission Streamlining Task Force has recommended moving the majority of the 15-member Arts Commission’s functions out of the city charter and into the administrative code, where it will be more malleable — and subject to shifts in each administration’s priorities.

“If you wanted to create a perfect storm for an arts and culture community, then it’s all of the things we’re talking about,” Jenson says, counting off the staffing, organizational and budget changes coming from the city. “All of this change is rolling out and it’s coming towards the arts community. It looks like a small wave when you look out on the horizon, but it’s actually a tsunami.”

‘Artists Live Here: Community Convening’ will take place at SOMArts (934 Brannan St., San Francisco) on Friday, Feb. 13, 4–8 p.m.