The current attempt to merge major organizations is light on details, causing anxiety in a community that’s already under threat
San Francisco’s arts agencies are on the verge of a major restructuring that might affect how the arts are governed by The City. At a time when local galleries are shuttering under economic pressures and federal policies are also crippling arts locally and nationally, the uncertain outcome of an overhaul has local arts advocates worried.
The City says it’s all for the best. Last year, San Francisco began the process of merging the San Francisco Arts Commission with two other city agencies – Grants for the Arts and Film SF. It’s an idea that has been tried, more than 20 years ago, but was halted at the time due to pushback from the arts community.
The current attempt is light on details, again causing anxiety in a sector that’s already in financial crisis — and needs reliable support, not more uncertainty. Established in 1932 in the City Charter, the San Francisco Arts Commission oversees municipal art, including the preservation of the Civic Art Collection, architectural designs for local building projects, and grant distribution to individual artists and arts nonprofits.
SFAC also maintains two public art galleries and supports The City’s seven neighborhood cultural centers — four brick-and-mortar, three virtual — through annual grants. Grants for the Arts was created in 1961 to provide general operating support to The City’s arts organizations via grants separate from the Arts Commission’s process. Film SF is currently part of the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, providing permitting for filming in The City and working to incentivize film partnerships.
Under the merger, the three agencies would report to a newly appointed executive director of arts and culture under the banner of the Office of Cultural Affairs, with the three agencies maintaining their individual leadership positions. The search to fill the executive-director position is currently underway. The City’s arts budget is funded by a baseline 1.5% of the hotel tax, the result of the passage of Proposition E in 2018.
But huge deficits in the tourism sector during the ensuing COVID-19 pandemic revealed the hotel tax to be a volatile source of funding. Mayor Daniel Lurie entered office last year facing a budget deficit that could breach $1 billion by 2029, which has led to streamlining strategies and recent layoffs — at least one of which was at the Arts Commission.
“San Francisco’s arts and cultural institutions are central to our city’s identity, and keeping them strong will be critical to continue our economic recovery,” said Ned Segal, San Francisco’s chief of housing and economic development, about the merger. “Our strategy to align The City’s arts organizations within a unified department will support San Francisco’s artists and cultural institutions by making grantmaking simpler and more transparent — improving operational coordination and strengthening our creative economy,” he said.
“We always want to get our partners the resources they need to succeed and this alignment will help us continue to deliver that. ” The notion of a merger, at least in part, surfaced as far back as 2004. Facing a $352 million budget deficit, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed combining the Arts Commission and the grants organization in order to streamline both agencies. Newsom ultimately withdrew the plan in response to the arts community’s staunch opposition.
San Francisco’s arts leaders are apprehensive this time around, too.
“The pros and cons of the merger remain to be seen,” said Rachelle Axel, director of Arts for a Better Bay Area, an advocacy group. “There’s an opportunity here to create a more efficient way to disperse funds to the art community in a way that is more coordinated than it has been in the past.
If a new merger considers grant cycles and deadlines that are less onerous for nonprofits and individual artists to navigate, that would be a good thing. ” “In recent years, there hasn’t been a sense of partnership between the art community and The City,” she said.
“Listening to arts professionals who have been doing this work for decades will only yield better results for this new agency. ” In October of 2025, The City held three community meetings to announce the plan to the arts community and gather feedback.
“Several hundred people showed up, but it seems to be a pretty universal sentiment that there was no engagement, and people left with more questions than answers,” Axel said. “Those questions are still standing, and there has not been more information shared.
” In January, The City shared a public announcement of the merger and an update on the next phases of the hiring process, but it was light on details regarding how the merger would be facilitated and how the agencies will function afterwards.
Ex // Top Stories SF 49ers tap Sutter Health as official health care provider Organization brings expanded access to health screenings, educational courses and assistance to the region SF hands reins of street outreach teams to different agency The Department of Public Health will oversee the groups that attempt to connect people with various social services New state bill aims to cancel medical debt for low-income Californians A bill introduced Monday is modeled on a Los Angeles program that erased county residents’ obligations “The time for action is now,” said Sunny Angulo, director of SF PROPEL and a former legislative aide at City Hall who helped author Prop.
E. “When you run on a platform of no more bureaucracy and then you create a middle-manager role — and then another middle manager within that — the message sent to the community is that The City will sit back and see what happens and not advocate either way. ” The City’s arts organizations are in desperate need of advocacy — especially from within City Hall.
SOMArts, one of The City’s brick-and-mortar cultural centers, received a roughly 10% cut to its annual Arts Commission grant last fiscal year, from $864,822 in 2024-2025 down to $777,184 in 2025-2026. The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts shuttered abruptly in January amid financial collapse. The African American Arts and Culture Complex will soon close its current location in the Western Addition for seismic retrofitting, and it has not yet announced if or where it will operate during the renovation.
Maria Jensen, executive director of SOMArts, told The Examiner that she doesn’t know what the amount of the organization’s 2026-27 Arts Commission grant will be. She said that in years past, the organization has known the size of its grant by May.
The organization also learned in March 2025 that a reimbursement model would be implemented at the end of that fiscal year, requiring the group to front the money it planned to spend on its arts programs, which include a robust annual slate of exhibitions and public programs. With Segal’s help, SOMArts was able to delay implementation of the reimbursement model to this year.
“We’re in a moment of flying blind,” Jensen said. “The only thing we can do is make some unfortunate trims in our labor budget. I’m requesting they restore our slashed 10% — and looking at hotel data, we should be owed an increase. Repayment policy isn’t going to fly if you cut their grant.
” Based on projected hotel-tax revenues, this year’s City arts budget was $33 million — but current projections are showing a $2.2 million increase over expected revenues. That should theoretically solve the roughly $87,000 reduction to the SOMArts grant — with plenty left over. Segal did not respond to The Examiner’s question about how the fruits of The City’s recent economic recovery might be directed towards arts organizations.
The merger of The City’s arts agencies isn’t the only change on the horizon that could affect the Arts Commission. Mayor Daniel Lurie and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman are currently authoring at least one ballot measure that would amend the City Charter with the aim of making San Francisco’s government more efficient.
While it remains to be seen exactly what areas of the charter Mandelman’s ballot measure would target, some arts advocates worry that SFAC could be removed from the charter and stripped of its governing authority. If the Arts Commission were relegated to an advisory body, it would also strip the public of its authority.
At public hearings, residents are currently able to weigh in on matters such as The City’s public art, a topic that has been hotly contested in recent years. Mandelman’s office did not respond to The Examiner’s request for comment.
“The commission is incredibly important in terms of public feedback,” Jensen said. “If you remove this public forum process, you’re also removing government oversight. While these systems are designed to be effective, the most effective thing is dialogue. ” SOMArts has hosted two town-hall meetings to gather the arts community to share information and muster support during the current period of uncertainty.
Arts for a Better Bay Area will host a public rally in support of arts funding, cultural preservation, Arts Commission governance and accessible community engagement at City Hall on April 28 at 11:30 a.m. The current moment of crisis has proven that even if the arts scene doesn't get the support it needs from City Hall, it will always come together to support itself. And that might be what matters most.
Max Blue is an art critic whose “State of the Arts” column appears monthly in The Examiner.
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