Arts Commission staff criticize director amid layoffs and merger talks
Staff say the Arts Commission lacked visible leadership as layoffs, grant cuts and merger talks hit the agency, raising new questions about trust and support for artists.
San Francisco Arts Commission employees are accusing Director Ralph Remington of being absent at a moment when the agency was absorbing layoffs, grant changes and merger talks with Grants for the Arts and the San Francisco Film Commission. The criticism lands inside a city agency established by charter in 1932, and it underscores a widening gap between the commission’s public mission and what staff say they experienced as leadership uncertainty.
Mayor Daniel Lurie directed that the Arts Commission’s strategic-planning process be integrated with Grants for the Arts and the Film Commission, and meeting records show Remington telling commissioners in July that the work was being folded together. By Aug. 27, 2025, executive committee minutes said he reported ongoing progress on the potential merger and cited joint presentations to the Mayor’s Office. For staff, that process has become inseparable from the day-to-day strain of cutting budgets and protecting programs.
Those tensions were on display at the July 7, 2025, full commission meeting, when SOMArts Managing Director Jana McRae said a 10% grant cut would force staff layoffs, fewer exhibitions and delayed equipment upgrades. Former Arts Commissioner Dorka Keehn also criticized a lack of transparency around proposed grant policy changes. The complaints followed the city’s July 1 announcement that the Arts Commission awarded $10.4 million in grants for the 2025-2026 cycle, supporting 151 grantees, including 98 individual artists, 47 arts nonprofits and six cultural centers.
City figures show more than $7.5 million of that funding went to individual artists and arts nonprofits, while nearly $3 million went to cultural centers. Grants for the Arts, meanwhile, said it has provided more than $400 million to San Francisco’s nonprofit arts and cultural community since its founding in 1961, and that it moved from one-year grants to two-year grants for the first time in its 64-year history in response to grantee feedback. That shift is now part of a broader restructuring that staff say has left them navigating change without steady leadership at the top.
The merger talk also reopened old political scars. In 2004-05, a previous proposal to merge Grants for the Arts with the Arts Commission and cut staff drew strong opposition from the arts community before it was dropped. Now, budget materials for fiscal years 2025-26 and 2026-27 show the Arts Commission operating on a two-year budget cycle while responding to major changes, a sign that the agency is being pressed to adapt even as employees question whether its director has been present enough to guide them through the upheaval.
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