The Bay Area photography exhibition venue SF Camerawork is calling it quits after 52 years, the institution announced on its website yesterday.
“This decision follows years of rising operating costs, declining public funding, and a changing philanthropic landscape,” said the institution. “SF Camerawork is not alone in facing these pressures; arts organizations across the country are confronting similar challenges. Despite the determined efforts of our staff, Board, artists, donors, and supporters to secure a sustainable future, we have reached the difficult conclusion that we can no longer continue operations.
Its final exhibition, a solo of Bay Area photographer John Chiara, closes August 16. Recent solo shows have included artists like Ebti, Charles Lee, Chris McCaw, Nasim Moghadam, and Tricia Rainwater.
Founded in 1974 by a group of artists including Hal Fischer, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Lew Thomas, SF Camerawork was early to host exhibitions and lectures by provocative artists including Sally Mann, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, and Joel-Peter Witkin, and has recently put on the first West Coast shows for practitioners like Binh Danh, Jennifer Karady, and Meghann Riepenhoff.
San Francisco’s economy has been the subject of much debate in public policy, tech and media circles, as a result of a high vacancy rate in office buildings, shuttering of retail stores, and high rates of homelessness and drug use, even as living costs remain prohibitively high. Devorah Lauter reported for ARTnews in 2024 that some locals called out a “false doom narrative,” as Ralph Remington, director of the San Francisco Arts Commission, put it, saying that “our scene is, in fact, thriving.”
But the body count is undeniable.
The nonprofit Kadist shuttered its San Francisco space in 2025 after 14 years there. San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum said in late 2024 that it would close for a year or more, citing financial difficulties; it remains shuttered. The California College of the Arts announced it would close in 2027—before Nashville’s Vanderbilt University revealed that it would acquire the campus and open the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design in light of a $75 million donation from the Nvidia founder and his wife.
The business side of the art world has also been in trouble. Respected gallery Altman Siegel closed recently after 16 years in the city, saying the market had grown “too difficult.” Even Larry Gagosian, in an interview this year, counted his attempt to establish a gallery there as one of his two notable failures. “I mean, nobody showed up,” he said. “It was so depressing.”
