The estate of late famed photographer Ansel Adams is up for sale at a $5.4 million asking price.

The home has four bedrooms and three and a half baths and is in the picturesque West Clay Park area of San Francisco. The home, which was built in 1902, the same year Adams was born, includes a salon annex that the photographer designed himself and added in 1929. Adams lived at the San Francisco home until moving his family to the Monterey Peninsula in California in 1957.

“During Adams’ ownership and the subsequent years, this room transported the spirit of the great residential salons of Europe through its life as a meeting point for the city’s artistic talents filling the room with classical music and operatic song. This wing of the home has a loft-like, romantic art studio with sitting room and the primary suite with a sitting area and outlooks to the garden,” the Sotheby’s listing for the house reads.

The 3,810-square-foot home features an outdoor living area, a wood burning fireplace, terrace, glass atrium dining area, and a loft-like art studio, the listing describes. The long driveway leading to the home is surrounded by “a terraced garden design by the renowned landscape architect Topher Delaney.”

Adams was renowned for his landscape photography, but he was also a master of technique. With Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System, which can be used to capture a wide scale of tones within a single image. His sharp eye and attention to detail in each shadow and highlight is part of why he’s remembered as one of the most influential landscape photographers in history.

It’s not hard to imagine the inspiration Adams might have taken in the very home up for sale today. Just a short walk to both the water and the Presidio of San Francisco, a national park, he would have access to San Francisco’s beauty simply by walking out the door. Even within the home, the sun shined through the foyer, large windows let in heaps of natural light and views of the Golden Gate Bridge, which was first constructed from 1933 to 1937 while Adams lived in the San Francisco home.

Adams passed away in 1984, but remains well-known for his iconic photographs.

Image credits: Photographs courtesy of David Duncan Livingston

The post Ansel Adams Property in San Francisco for Sale for $5.4 Million appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

art world

The school will liquidate its assets to pay creditors, but the fate of its famous Diego Rivera fresco remains unknown.

• Taylor Dafoe

• April 27, 2023

Art Institute San Francisco. Courtesy of Getty Images.

The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), saddled with outstanding debt, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The move will require the 151-year-old school to liquidate its remaining assets to pay creditors.

The submission marks what may be the final chapter in what was once an important institution declining operation in recent years finally closed its doors last July. However, one important question remains to be answered: What will happen to SFAI’s famous 1931 Diego Rivera fresco?

According to a report by Chronicle of San Francisco, The art school owes more than $10 million to various creditors. First up is the University of San Francisco, which is said to have owed more than $6 million after breaking up a deal to acquire SFAI last summer

The regents of the University of California and the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, owners of SFAI’s two separate campuses, say they are owed $450,000 and $750,000 in unpaid rent, respectively. Also on the list of creditors are the many former faculty members who lost their jobs and are now owed severance pay.

Regarding her assets, SFAI reported in the filing that she owns a painting by noted Mission School artist Alicia McCarthy valued at US$125,000 and office equipment and art supplies valued at US$50,000. The real treasure of the school is the Rivera mural, estimated to be worth up to $50 million. However, it remains unclear whether the institution can sell the artwork to pay off its debt.

Diego Rivera’s mural at the San Francisco Art Institute. Courtesy of the San Francisco Art Institute.

In late 2020, SFAI’s board of directors voted to explore “avenues and offers for endowment or sale” of the fresco to save the school, and Star Wars creator George Lucas was even said to have been interested in acquiring it. But the move promptly met with backlash from students, alumni and community members. Photographer Catherine Opie, who graduated from SFAI in 1985, called the potential sale an “incredibly unscrupulous decision.” Open letter to the school administration.

The mural was later declared a San Francisco landmark. Therefore, it may not be relocated without the approval of the city council.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who sponsored the landmark legislation, said so timeline that he wishes to transfer the piece to a public gallery or museum.

SFAI’s legacy rivals that of any art school in North America. His list of Alumni and former faculty members reads as in the 20th century art history phone book with names like Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, Mark Rothko and Kehinde Wiley. But for many, the school’s earlier heights made its steep — and messy — decline that much more painful.

In March 2020, following the mass closures of the COVID-19 pandemic, SFAI announced that it would suspend its degree programs, halt student enrollment, and close indefinitely. Weeks later, the institution’s board voted to keep the school open on a limited basis and launched a “campaign to refocus and reinvent the school’s business model.”

By July, the prospects seemed even brighter than that The school received over $4 million in donations. The board promised to resume its courses in the fall and invited students to re-enroll.

But the wave of support proved too little, too late. SFAI officially ceased operations in July 2022.

“The reality is that tuition-based schools of this size are a vanishing species,” said Gordon Knox, a former SFAI president timeline. “And there is no changing evolution.”

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The post The San Francisco Artwork Institute, Which Educated Artists From Ansel Adams to Kehinde Wiley, Has Filed for Chapter appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.