Center for Contemporary Arts to Reopen Cinema

After announcing the Center for Contemporary Arts would close on Thursday, April 6, the board of the enduring Santa Fe arts nonprofit today walked back that position and says it will re-open its popular cinema with a reduced staff next month.

“Following the heartfelt, generous outpouring of support from the Santa Fe community, the CCA board is pleased and grateful to announce the reopening of the CCA Cinema,” reads a new post on the organization’s website.

The “tentative” target date for a return to movies-only operations is May 3, with Emmy-winning editor and producer Paul Barnes—himself the former CCA board vice chair—serving as general manager, as well as returning to a seat on the board. The news comes after a social media-spurred pledge drive kicked off by board member Ellen Premack helped garner promises of more than $200,000 so far, David Muck, board chairman, tells SFR.

The nonprofit has not announced what it plans to include in the reopening or subsequent programming, and Barnes was not immediately available for comment.

Muck says the board also discussed a plan in progress to reopen the Tank Garage gallery space soon as well, albeit most likely under the purview of a partnering organization with its own board and executive director.

“We have four organizations that we’ve been talking to almost daily,” Muck says, though he declined to name them. “We’re doing our due diligence, we’re doing interviews with them and our board, and once we get past that process, then we’ll look at making a selection and partnering with them.”

For now, the next step is making good on the money pledged to the nonprofit over the last week or so with what Muck calls “an aggressive effort to secure the donations.” Those who pledged will be encouraged to donate the same amounts through the CCA’s online donations portal. Those who’ve neither pledged nor donated yet can also do so now. Muck notes the organization didn’t encourage donations there in the first place because the board was uncertain the website would remain live.

CCA originally opened in 1979 and has cut an interesting swath of programming and peril across the decades. Notably, things went haywire in 1996 when the original staff and board were unceremoniously fired and locked out of their offices. In recent years, the nonprofit provided space for local events and exhibits including but hardly limited to the CURRENTS New Media Festival (which takes over the Rodeo Grounds this year) and the wildly popular Self-Determined group show of contemporary Indigenous artists. Even Meow Wolf as we know it has its roots in the 2011 CCA show, The Due Return, a massive interactive ship that precludes its current Santa Fe House of Eternal Return installation.

The state owns the campus on Old Santa Fe Trail that houses CCA, along with the Santa Fe Children’s Museum and the Bataan Memorial Military Museum. According to spokesman Daniel Zillman from the Department of Cultural Affairs, which rents the space from the state Armory Board and sublets the space to the CCA, the nonprofit has informed the state that it no longer wishes to terminate its lease.

Though the CCA terminated all its employees earlier this month, Muck tells SFR some cinema staff will return alongside potential new faces. The same cannot be said for former Executive Director and Chief Curator, Danyelle Means (Oglala Lakota) whom, SFR learned last week, resigned ahead of the closure announcement to free up funds, ensuring outgoing staff would be paid severance.