film

Four Winters

DateMay 5 @ 3:30 pm

Part of the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival – a screening in commemoration of Yom HaShoah Playing in the…

Burning

DateMay 3 @ 1:00 pm

Playing in the CCA Studio Part of CCA’s Director Spotlight: Lee Chang-dong May 3-9 Jong-su bumps into a girl who…

Poetry

DateMay 3 @ 10:30 am

Playing in the CCA Studio Part of CCA’s Director Spotlight: Lee Chang-dong May 3-9 Mija lives with her middle-schooler grandson…

One Hand Don’t Clap

DateApril 19

Playing in the CCA Studio April 19-25: Playing daily at 11:00am, 3:30pm, 8:00pm (no screenings Monday and Tuesday) Originally released…

Riddle of Fire

DateApril 19

Playing in the CCA Studio April 19-25: Playing daily at 1:00pm, 5:30pm (no screenings Monday and Tuesday) On a quest…

La Chimera

DateApril 19

Playing in the CCA Studio April 19-25: Playing daily at 4:30pm (no screenings Monday and Tuesday) Set in the 1980s,…

Limbo

DateApril 19

Playing in the CCA Cinema April 19-25: Playing daily at 11:30am, 2:15pm, 7:15pm (no screenings Monday and Tuesday) In a…

Seven Blessings

DateApril 30 @ 5:30 pm

Part of the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival Playing in the CCA Cinema Marie travels from France to Israel, where…

Crumb

DateApril 13 @ 10:45 am

Playing in the CCA Studio May 10-16 30th anniversary of this acclaimed documentary – an intimate portrait of controversial underground…

Nowhere Special

DateMay 10 @ 10:30 am

Playing in the CCA Cinema May 10-16 When single father John (James Norton; Bob Marley: One Love, Happy Valley, Little…

Film is Dead. Long Live Film!

DateApril 26 @ 1:00 pm

Playing in the CCA Studio April 26-May 2 Film is Dead. Long Live Film! explores the vanishing world of private…

The Old Oak

DateApril 26 @ 11:00 am

Playing in the CCA Studio April 26-May 2 The future for the last remaining pub, The Old Oak, in a…

2024 Copyright Center for Contemporary Arts – Santa Fe. All rights reserved.

The Board of Directors for the Center for Contemporary Arts of Santa Fe (CCA) has voted to close the organization after serving the Santa Fe and northern New Mexico community on its forty-fourth year of operation. The decision was reached after careful consideration of options presented during its current strategic planning initiative.

“Closing a cherished, community organization like CCA is one of the most difficult decisions a board can make,” said David Muck, CCA Board Chair. “However, we simply couldn’t secure the level of individual donations required to achieve the high quality of programming and exhibitions envisioned by CCA’s professional staff and board of directors,” he continued.

Many nonprofits in the U.S. were hit hard by Covid and CCA is a good example. The CCA Cinema closed during Covid, and attendance was slow to resume, reflecting national downward trends in moviegoing post-Covid as reported in multiple news outlets, such as IndieWire and others. In 2023, the organization forecast the cinema to perform at only 50% of pre-Covid levels, resulting in monthly losses. Though grants and individual donations to the organization were up significantly in 2022 and 2023, they simply weren’t enough to make up the difference in the annual budget and cover both current and planned exhibitions and operations.

“This tough decision did not come lightly,” said Danyelle Means, CCA Executive Director and Head Curator. “For a nonprofit institution that operates independently of state support, the annual donations needed to sustainably continue operating was not enough, especially in the wake of challenges from pandemic closures and reduced attendance,” Means continued.

CCA did have its share of recent successes: CCA Executive Director Danyelle Means had secured a three-year grant of $100,000 per year from the Ford Foundation, with an option to renew for another three-year period. The organization was also the recipient of a $50,000 inaugural grant from Ruth Arts Foundation, as well as other granting organizations. Self-Determined, a 2022 CCA exhibition, was listed as one of the world’s Top 50 Exhibitions of 2022 by Hyperallergic magazine and CCA’s new monthly Closer Looks cinema series was a hit with film enthusiasts.

The CCA board of directors considered closing the organization in December of 2021, but voted to remain open in 2022 in hopes of a recovery post-Covid. However, despite the hard work of CCA staff and the accomplishments like the ones mentioned above, the shuttered period during which the cinema was closed proved too challenging to overcome. CCA Cinema’s final day of public operations is Thursday, April 6, and all upcoming CCA gallery exhibitions and public programs are cancelled.