Financial Crisis Forces SF’s Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts to Close

The beloved Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, a San Francisco nonprofit that has pulsed with Latino dance, theater, historic graphic arts and music for nearly five decades, collapsed under mounting financial distress.

Nearly all staff resigned or were fired in December. MCCLA ran out of operating funds Jan. 20, and its doors shuttered indefinitely Jan. 26, leaving the empty building in the hands of the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), which represents the City, the building’s owner.

The closure followed months of financial strain, staff layoffs and reduced programming. MCCLA had previously planned to reopen in late January with limited hours, but the organization ran out of money before those plans could be realized.

“Ideally, MCCLA would have continued,” said a staff member with the San Francisco Arts Commission. “But we received records stating it had no staff and was insolvent, which violates the lease.”

He spoke on Tuesday while inside the otherwise empty 37,000-square-foot building, explaining why the City stepped in to secure the building during the extended closure.

The building is expected to remain closed for at least two years. MCCLA had planned to relocate this June in preparation for the City retrofitting the building beginning in early 2027.

Meanwhile, distraught Mission community leaders planned to meet next Monday to consider possible paths forward.

“This moment of transition is a wake-up call that we can’t sit on our laurels and just enjoy what other generations have worked for,” said Francisco Herrera, a day laborer leader whose nonprofit, Nuevo Sol, took shape in meetings held at the Mission Cultural Center.

“We have to work as hard, if not harder, than they did in the ’60s and ’70s to win and sustain institutions like the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, Instituto Familiar de la Raza and so many Mission organizations that exist.”

“We’ll be OK,” said MCCLA board president and Mission businessman Bob Sánchez, even after interim Executive Director Dereck Jentzsch resigned Sunday after two weeks in the part-time role.

“There’s a lot of agitation in the community right now,” Sánchez admitted. “But our community has a lot of strengths. We’ll organize, and we’ll work together. We have great leadership in the community that we can tap from to form a new board.”

With no staff and no operating funds, MCCLA outlined several drastic options in an email sent to the Arts Commission and obtained by El Tecolote.

Dated Jan. 14, the email, titled “Extreme Scenario Planning from MCCLA,” lays out what its authors describe as “grim” facts in an attempt to persuade the City to advance grant funds so the center could remain open until June.

Signed by MCCLA’s interim, part-time executive director, Jentzsch, and Sánchez, the email describes a cash-flow crisis so severe that, without immediate funding, the organization warned it would collapse within days.

“MCCLA is burning $50k/mo ($12k/week) more than revenue and has no revenue,” wrote Jentzsch and Sánchez, adding that $300k would “keep the Center from folding before June 30, 2026.”

Even with the unlikely disbursement of all outstanding SFAC grants, the email warned, “MCCLA will not be able to easily resume programmatic activities or restart utilization of the space by the public for any purposes.”

To make matters worse, the authors wrote, “the current situation prevents MCCLA from generating revenue.”

“If SFAC can commit to eventually release even a portion of the outstanding grant amounts,” they added, “we can extend lines of credit OR begin to ask other potential donors in good faith for their support. Without new funding, MCCLA will be insolvent January 20th.”

Without the requested funds, Sánchez and Jentzsch outlined four possible options: declaring bankruptcy; merging with other arts nonprofits such as SoMa Arts or Galería de la Raza; creating an interim oversight structure and fiscal sponsorship by a “mission-aligned organization or even SFAC itself”; or a complete “retool” of MCCLA.

At its height, MCCLA served approximately 20,000 students a year. Its historic legacy includes more than 10,000 prints documenting Mission District events over five decades, Day of the Dead celebrations, Carnaval and exhibitions honoring women artists.

In September, then-Executive Director Martina Ayala reported that flood damage in the building had forced her to lay off staff.

However, the City disputes that characterization. “The City covered a majority of flood repair costs,” said Coma Te, SFAC communications director. “To suggest the laying off of staff is related to the flood damage seems inaccurate.”

With the City’s planned 2027 retrofit approaching, Ayala said she needed to raise $4 million for the center’s relocation by this summer. She resigned on Dec. 15.

Te clarified that “SFAC granted MCCLA $490k in relocation funding to help MCCLA prepare for the move.” This amount was on top of their annual operating grant, which this past year was $682k,” he said.

“It was the responsibility of the organization to plan for and fundraise for any additional amount of funds the organization estimated they needed ($2-4m) to temporarily relocate for the duration of the planned retrofit work,” he said.

Since its founding in 1977, MCCLA has paid $1 a year in rent as part of an agreement between Latino activists and the City to reactivate a space that once housed a furniture store. In return, the organization was responsible for daily operations and building maintenance.

Over time, the arts and education hub became home to La Raza Graphics and later Mission Graphics, which produced posters and flyers by major artists including Calixto Robles, Ester Hernández, Juana Alicia and Herbert Sigüenza.

The posters documented history, announcing festivals, marches and concerts throughout the Mission District and San Francisco.

On Sunday, a small group of volunteers rushed to the center’s poster archives to pack and safeguard as much of the historic, and potentially revenue-generating, artwork as possible. The mood was somber, frantic and quietly purposeful.

“I just saw an ’80s immigration poster that could be so current,” said Eva Martínez, MCCLA’s volunteer lead archivist, underscoring the works’ enduring relevance. Martínez is also a volunteer archivist with Acción Latina, the nonprofit publisher of El Tecolote.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Martínez said. “So we don’t want to take a chance of not being able to get documents, computers or organizational files.”

As he boxed posters, local historian Chris Carlsson reflected on the artwork in front of him.

“These are an essential part of this neighborhood,” said Carlsson, author of Hidden San Francisco, adding that the works represent “a huge legacy of the social struggles that define our place in the world.”

The archival collections will be temporarily rehoused in board president Sánchez’s warehouse in Hayward and at La Raza Community Resource Center, as organizers continue searching for additional local storage options.