The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) in San Francisco announced this week that it will look to sell its building in the city’s Yerba Buena Gardens neighborhood, which also includes some of the city’s other top cultural organizations.
The decision to sell is part of “a series of strategic steps to ensure a sustainable and impactful future for The Museum,” according to a release, which includes stabilizing the organization’s finances and ensuring that its endowments are not drained. The release also noted that this “new vision” for the CJM will allow for “greater flexibility and ensure a viable operating model.”
Founded in 1984, the CJM has been closed to the public since December 2024, and in those 15 months it has reduced its operating budget from $7.5 million to $3 million, allowing it to reduce its debt by half to under $14 million, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle, which first reported the news. Its closure also saw a pause in the museum’s programming and a reduction in its staff by some 80 percent.
“We explored many options, and what became clearest to us was that our building is beyond our capacity,” CJM executive director Kerry King told ARTnews in an email. “My top priority, and the top priority of the board, is to ensure that The Contemporary Jewish Museum continues to exist and serve audiences for generations to come. While listing the building for sale is a difficult step, I’m also completely confident that it is the right one for the organization as a whole.”
She added, “We have an important role to play in the Bay Area, and we are committed to continuing to do that work.”
Designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect behind the Jewish Museum Berlin, and opened in 2008, the CJM’s current home measures 63,000 square feet and features a blue cube that serves as an intervention into the historic power station that Libeskind adapted for use as a museum.
It will be publicly listed next week. The asking price will not be included in the listing, which “is common practice when a property is so unique,” according to a museum spokesperson. In a release the museum said it would look for a buyer who would be “complementary” to the neighborhood’s other cultural offerings, which include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
The CJM is the last Bay Area institution to be affected by rising costs in the region, though the most high-profile instances have been limited to art schools. In 2022, the San Francisco Art Institute permanently closed, after several years of declining enrollment and multiple failed mergers with other universities. It ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2023, with the sale of its campus being one way to help repay its mountain of debts. In 2024, Laurene Powell Jobs, one of the country’s top collectors, bought SFAI’s campus for $30 million, announcing she would use it as an arts institution.
This past January brought news that the California College of Arts would close next year and that Vanderbilt University had purchased the campus for an undisclosed price.
“At a time when arts organizations and nonprofits across the country—and in the Bay Area in particular—are struggling, taking an operational pause was both essential and beneficial to us,” King said in her email. “We are continuing to refine our vision, and will focus more directly on using contemporary art to interpret and shape Jewish experience. Today’s news is not easy, but it is an important step on the way to an exciting and promising future for The CJM.”
