San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum Plans to Sell Building
San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) said it plans to sell its Daniel Libeskind–designed building in Yerba Buena Gardens as part of a strategy to stabilize finances and avoid draining its endowments, ARTnews reported. The museum has been closed since December 2024 and, over about 15 months, cut its operating budget from $7.5 million to $3 million, reduced debt by half to under $14 million, and reduced staff by about 80%, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Executive director Kerry King said the building is “beyond our capacity” and that selling it is intended to ensure the institution’s long-term survival and continued service to Bay Area audiences. The 63,000-square-foot building, opened in 2008, will be publicly listed next week without an asking price, and the museum said it hopes for a buyer compatible with nearby cultural institutions such as SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora.
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This story was covered in Museums on the Brink, Heritage Under Fire