20 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.294.1113
The SFAI LF+A is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
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THE STORY OF THE ARCHIVES
The San Francisco Art Institute —founded in 1871—was one of the oldest and most influential fine arts institutions in the United States. For over 150 years, it nurtured generations of visionary artists who helped shape the cultural fabric of the Bay Area and left a lasting mark on the global art world. When SFAI permanently closed its doors in 2022, it left behind an extraordinary legacy—and an irreplaceable archive. In response, SFAI’s librarian-archivists, alumni, and community members came together to establish the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive, ensuring that this remarkable history remains accessible to artists, scholars, and the public.
A NEW HOME FOR THE ARCHIVES
Following the school’s closure, with help from many friends and supporters, the archives moved from the SFAI campus to their current home on the lower level of the Crown Point Press building at 20 Hawthorne Street in downtown San Francisco.
OUR MISSION
The SFAI Archives are an amazing resource—fascinating, fun, and historically significant. Through exhibitions, public programs, researcher support, archival preservatation and digitzation initiatives, the Foundation is committed to preserving and activating the archives and SFAI’s legacy as a home for artistic creation and experimentation.
STAFF
Jeff Gunderson (Archivist, SFAI LF+A) was the Librarian and Archivist at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1981 through its closure. He has written on the history of California photography, the San Francisco art scene of the 1940s, and most recently on “Adaline Kent: Communities & Comraderies, 1920s-1950s,” an essay for the retrospective exhibition catalog, Adaline Kent: Click of Authenticity (Rizzoli: 2023) as well as “The Education of Ed Hardy,” published for the De Young Museum’s Ed Hardy Deeper than Skin: The Art of the New Tattoo (Rizzoli, 2019). He has done presentations on artists Joan Brown, Elmer Bischoff, Ed Ruscha, Charles Howard, the history of Bay Area conceptual art, the influence of art libraries on artists and, with Jim Van Buskirk, the history of SF’s LGBTQ art scene. He also wrote the introductory essay to Black Power/Flower Power: Photographs by Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch.
In the last few years, he has fallen down the rabbit hole of exhibitions as a collaborator on the 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibition Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics and Black Futures as well as an editor/collaborator on the UC Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives 2020 online exhibition Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories, Matrix 277. Jeff is currently working on a collection of essays about open water swimming.
Becky Alexander (Archivist, SFAI LF+A) worked in the SFAI Library and Archives from 2005 through 2022 and has a deep affection for the school and all the amazing, weird, creative people who made it what it was, both in its recent past and throughout its long, colorful history. She is grateful to have the opportunity to preserve and share the SFAI Archives with the wider world. Becky's writing on SFAI's history (such as painter Joan Brown's open water swimming practice and the ghost that haunts SFAI's bell-less bell tower) can be found in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's online exhibition, Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories/Matrix 277.
BOARD MEMBERSSuzie Buchholz
Board of Directors Charles DeSantis
President and Board Chair
Diana Fuller
Board of Directors
Suzanne Greva
Board Treasurer
Katie Hood Morgan
Board Secretary
Anna Sidana
Board of Directors
Board of Directors
President and Board Chair
Board of Directors
Board Treasurer
Board Secretary
Board of Directors
BOARD BIOS
Suzie Buchholz (Board of Directors) is an abstract painter, sculptor and installation artist with a playful yet rebellious approach to the tradition of Abstract Expressionism. Her process is highly physical, driven by an instinct for harmony of color and form. Inspired by the tangled and fragile moments of daily life, her work combines a streetwise sensibility with an uncanny, painterly tenderness.Buchholz holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and Certificat from the Atelier du Soliel, Aix en Provence, France. She is the recipient of residencies, including Djerassi Artists Program, the Bay Area Discovery Museum, and Sant’Anna in Camprena, Pienza, Italy. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and Europe, including Galerie Ruban Vert in Aix-en-Provence, France, Colorida Gallery in Lisbon, Portugal, Galerie Mani in Berlin, Germany and Galleria di Biblioteca in Pienza, Italy. A multimedia installation “Pills for Parents” was exhibited at Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, and was part of the Zero1 Biennial. Her work has been the recipient of awards including Clio, Webby, Addy, Communication Arts, W3, Davey; her artwork is the collections of Presidio of San Francisco, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Djerassi, Melinda French Gates/Pivotal, UCSF and numerous other corporate and private collections. Buchholz lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Charles DeSantis (Foundation President and Board Chair) is heavily committed to giving back to the humanitarian sector and serving children and refugees in the greatest need worldwide. He started two art education programs–Art in Kibera and Kibera Art Institute–serving AIDS-impacted youth in the Kibera Slum (Nairobi, Kenya) ages 4 to 22 giving a voice and identity through the visual arts. The Nairobi National Museum (Kenya’s Smithsonian) hosted a two-month long exhibit of The Art of the Smart, Beautiful and Important Children of Kibera in October 2018. Charles has served on many boards worldwide such as Nyumbani USA, School of Hope Foundation, and he is Chair Emeritus of the US Association for UNHCR (UN refugee organization). Charles continues his commitment to the arts through organization boards such as The Washington Ballet, Sitar Art Center.
Charles is an artist and a senior leader and received his bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary’s College of California in Art Practice and his post-baccalaureate from the San Francisco Art Institute in Painting under the mentorship of Dewey Crumpler. Additionally, Charles has extensive graduate education from Georgetown University and serves as the Associate Vice President and Chief Benefits Officer of Georgetown University. Charles lives in Washington, D.C., with his husband David McDermott and their children, Lucas, Andre, Jasmine and Lilly. He has published two books with New Academia Publishing: Smart, Beautiful and Important: teaching art to AIDS-affected orphans in Africa’s Largest slum and Lucas and Lilly go to Kindergarten.
Diana Fuller (Board of Directors) is a freelance curator, editor, and producer of the films Rift, Racing to Zero, and Once Was Water. She is the on-going director of the Screenwriting Program at the Community of Writers where she has been involved since its founding in the late-60s. In the late 1990s, Fuller began working on the seminal exhibition and book catalog, Art/Women/California, 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections (2002), documenting more than 90 women artists working in California in the second half of the twentieth century. Fuller was the former president of the Film Arts Foundation and former chair of the Roxie Theater; she currently serves on the board of the Artists in Residence Program at Recology.
Suzanne Greva (Board Treasurer) is a seasoned financial executive and consultant with extensive experience in strategic planning, accounting, and operational leadership. She currently leads her own consulting practice, offering part-time CFO services, financial planning, and compliance support to mission-driven organizations across the San Francisco Bay Area. Since 2020, Suzanne has held several leadership roles at California College of the Arts (CCA), where she currently serves as Vice President of Finance, Accounting and Business Services, and Treasurer. From 2023 to 2024, she also stepped in as Acting Chief Financial Officer, leading critical financial initiatives and institutional planning efforts.
Prior to CCA, Suzanne held senior finance positions at Carbon Lighthouse and the ClimateWorks Foundation, as well as at Golden Gate University and Dominican University of California. She began her career at Deloitte & Touche and later expanded her operational finance expertise at Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates. Suzanne holds a BS in Business Administration with a focus in Accounting from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. A San Francisco native, Suzanne balances her professional work with deep community involvement. She is an open water swimmer and active member of the South End Rowing Club, a volunteer foster care provider for Guide Dogs for the Blind, and serves on several nonprofit boards. Her commitment to both financial excellence and community service underscores her values-driven approach to leadership.
Katie Hood Morgan (Board Secretary) is a non-profit arts leader with 15 years of curatorial and administrative experience in a variety of mission-driven institutions. She is deeply committed to arts advocacy and equity and guided by the core belief that supporting creative practice leads to possibilities for a transformed future.
She most recently served as Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries (New York City) where she oversaw exhibitions and publications for Hunter's three exhibition spaces in Manhattan. Notable recent projects include Last Art School, a major group exhibition with artist-curator Lindsey White, and A Living Collection, a long-term permanent collection exhibition with the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. Katie worked at the San Francisco Art Institute in various curatorial roles over the period of a decade, including that of Curator of Exhibitions and Public Programs. Prior positions include: Program Director of FOR-SITE Foundation, Assistant Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and Curator of the artist-run Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, all in San Francisco, CA. She has organized exhibitions and public programs with artists and collectives including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith, Jill Magid, Alicia McCarthy, and Postcommodity, among many others.
Katie has contributed to curatorial projects and programming at institutions and organizations including the Oakland Museum of California; the de Young Museum; California College of the Arts; SFMOMA; and MASS MoCA. She has participated in presentations, juries, and studio critiques with Creative Capital, NARS Foundation, Hunter College, the School of Visual Arts, New York, and ACRE Residency, Wisconsin, and The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY. Katie earned her BFA in History of Art and Visual Culture at University of California-Santa Cruz, and her MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She is a founding board member of the SFAI Legacy Foundation + Archive.
Anna Sidana (Board of Directors) is an award-winning visual artist and large-scale oil painter. Anna’s art explores an emotional connection with her family history and heritage. Straddling abstraction and representation, Anna creates large dreamscapes based on childhood memories. Anna has had several solo shows and she has shown her work twice at the de Young Museum of San Francisco, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, The Diego Rivera Gallery, and Times Square, New York amongst others. She was also selected for the London Art Biennale and received two Sheridan Awards. Anna has served on the board of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and ZERO1. Anna holds a bachelor’s degree from the British Computer Society (BCS) and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI).
Prior to becoming a full-time artist, Anna held senior executive positions in marketing at various technology companies in Silicon Valley. Anna lives in San Francisco, California.