Vanderbilt University Buys California College of the Arts, Raising Questions
Curator Natasha Boas described the news as “another massive shock in a series of cultural shocks” for San Francisco’s arts community.
After years of declining enrollment, the California College of the Arts (CCA), the last remaining private art and design school in the San Francisco Bay Area, will shutter following the completion of the 2026–2027 academic year.
Following the closure of CCA, Tennessee's Vanderbilt University will subsume the art school's San Francisco campus as part of an agreement announced by both institutions on Tuesday, January 13.
Curator Natasha Boas, who helped pioneer CCA's Curatorial Practice Master's program and taught at the school from 2000 to 2010, described the news as "another massive shock in a series of cultural shocks" to the city in a statement to Hyperallergic.
"The very things we value, education, art, culture, are disappearing at a rapid rate," Boas wrote. "An art school is a very different animal from a university. Vanderbilt is totally off-brand. What is San Francisco doing to keep their artists in the city? A city without artists is a true dystopia."
The announcement of CCA's imminent closure comes a year after the college laid off 10% of staff in 2024 and eliminated open roles, citing a $20 million deficit at the time. Though the institution received $45 million in donations last February, half of which came from the family foundation of Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the college said in an announcement that its "tuition-driven business model" was no longer sustainable.
"These measures have proven to be temporary and not sustainable if we are to serve our community effectively," CCA President Howse said in a Monday community announcement. "Ultimately, neither of these is enough to ensure CCA can continue to operate independently.
Vanderbilt University is expected to install an academic campus for approximately 1,000 graduate and undergraduate students, thousands of miles from its Nashville home campus. The university said in an announcement that it planned to operate a CCA Institute at Vanderbilt, which will absorb the CCA's research space, the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Spokespeople for the institutions did not comment on whether Vanderbilt would incorporate CCA staff into its new campus, nor on which CCA programs, if any, would endure the transition.
In 2022, the institution embarked on a $123 million expansion project that created additional housing and a 90,000-square-foot campus buildout.
The move follows the 150-year-old San Francisco Art Institute's closure in 2022 on the heels of the pandemic, increasing debts, and a failed merger with the University of San Francisco. Last year, after philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs acquired the space, her nonprofit announced plans to convert the campus into an experimental studio program called the California Academy of Studio Arts.
Vanderbilt's expansion also comes after Northeastern University's merger with Mills College, a women's college in Oakland that had been financially struggling, in 2022.
Current CCA students who are finishing their degrees before the Vanderbilt campus opens can still graduate from the institution, but the college said those who need more time will have to transfer. Some SFAI students transferred to CCA following its closure.
“I taught at both SFAI and CCA over the decades," Boas said. "It is devastating to lose both venerable art schools in the span of a few years."
