San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum to Close to the Public for a Year or More

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco will shutter its galleries for at least a year, a move that its leadership attributed to continued financial difficulties resulting from the pandemic.

Because of the temporary closure, the museum will lay off some of its employees, though details for those cuts were not available by the time the shuttering was announced on Wednesday. The museum also said it could not yet supply a timeline for reopening.

Kerry King, director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum, called the temporary closure “the smartest, most proactive approach we could take” with the museum’s current financial picture in mind.

“This gives us the chance to do something bold and to rethink what we have done, but stronger, better, and perhaps more scaled to what the community needs now,” King told ARTnews, speaking by Zoom. “It became very clear that this was a very difficult but very helpful financial move so that we can keep going.”

Over the summer, the museum faced scrutiny over its “Contemporary Jewish Open” exhibition. Several participants in the show who had identified in their applications as being anti-Zionist dropped out amid a dispute with museum management. Heidi Rabben, a senior curator at the museum, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the artists had planned to show works that were “overtly political.”

Speaking to ARTnews, King said that the controversy over the “Contemporary Jewish Open” did not contribute to the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s decision to temporarily close to the public.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum was founded in 1984. Since its inauguration, it has held shows for artists such as Judy Chicago, Cary Lebowitz, Sophie Calle, and Susan Hiller.

In recent years, the museum has experienced signs of financial strain, something hardly unique to this institution following the Covid lockdown of 2020. Earlier this year, a deli housed inside the museum closed, citing an overall decline in foot traffic.

Various surveys issued by industry groups in 2020 and 2021 warned that permanent closures of museums would proliferate in the years to come as a result of the pandemic. And while institutions ranging from the Rubin Museum of Art in New York to the Bellevue Arts Museum in Seattle have indeed shut their doors, these closures have not been quite as widespread as experts feared.

The factors that induced closures such as those are many, but in the case the Bellevue Arts Museum, the institution had publicly stated that it was battling a “dire” financial situation before shuttering indefinitely in September.

King, the Contemporary Jewish Museum director, awaited her institution’s closure, currently set to go into effect on December 15, with tempered optimism. “We intend to be here—we’re not closing a business,” she said, noting that the institution aimed to continue fostering the careers of its staff members. “But it’s painful.”