Months after artists warned new rules could force them into debt, S.F. reconsiders

After months of opposition from artists and cultural organizations, San Francisco officials are backing away from a proposed grant-payment policy that critics said would force some of the city’s lowest-paid workers to finance public arts projects themselves.

The San Francisco Arts Commission said it is working with the controller’s office to revise a plan that would have provided recipients of Arts Commission grants with no more than half of their awards upfront and then required them to cover later expenses before seeking reimbursement from the city.

Before this proposal, which the Arts Commission announced in September 2025, artists could receive up to 90 percent of the funding upfront.

The commission has not announced what will replace the proposal, or when the revised terms will be released. But its acknowledgment that the revised policy needs to account for “the unique and practical realities faced by artists and arts organizations” represents a shift.

Artists spent months warning that a blanket reimbursement system, proposed by the Controller’s Office to create greater oversight for public money, was unrealistic for artists and small nonprofits that often do their work without access to the kind of savings, credit or administrative staff that the new reimbursement policy would have necessitated.

The reconsideration comes under new leadership as San Francisco consolidates the Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts and Film SF into a single cultural agency with Matthew Goudeau, the city’s first executive director of arts and culture, in charge.

Goudeau inherited both the proposed payment policy and an increasingly organized campaign against it.

Rachelle Axel, director of Arts for a Better Bay Area and a former Arts Commission employee of 21 years, said Goudeau was listening to community concerns.

Her organization gathered nearly 300 petition signatures urging the city to halt the reimbursement rules and create an approach tailored to the financial circumstances of different grantees.

“I’m eager to see what they deliver,” she wrote in an email. 

Arts Commission spokesperson Coma Te said they’ve heard the complaints, and the agency plans to hold focus groups with grantees later in the new fiscal year to inform additional changes.

Artists argued that the proposed policy treated an individual painter earning $40,000 a year as though they had the same financial resources as a large cultural institution.

They pointed to the city’s own figures to support their argument.

More than 80 percent of individual artists awarded Arts Commission grants in fiscal year 2025 earned less than San Francisco’s median household income, according to a chart in Mayor Daniel Lurie’s proposed budget. About 30 percent reported household incomes below $40,000.

Among them is painter Shrey Purohit, who spent five years applying to the city before winning a $50,000 grant this year for a project about San Francisco’s low-wage workers.

Purohit plans to interview 30 workers and create approximately 18 paintings based on their lives and relationships to the city. The works would be displayed in cafes and community spaces where the people represented could see them.

He earns about $36,000 a year from five jobs. He had hoped the grant would allow him to reduce that workload and devote more time to painting. Under the proposed reimbursement model, however, he said he was expecting to have to borrow money, hold a fundraiser or take on additional work to cover expenses.

Purohit, who said he is one of 59 grantees awaiting clarity on the policy, said he is encouraged that the commission is revisiting it but concerned that artists still do not know when their contracts will be finalized or when the money will arrive.

“What would help most right now is just knowing the timeline,” he said. That way, artists can plan ahead on their finances, “instead of guessing.”