The Executive Director of the Cartoon Art Museum has some good news for patrons of the cartoon arts. As she announced last week, her museum has found a new home for its collection of thousands of original pieces. That, the Chronicle reports, is a piece of proprerty just off Ghirardelli Square.
When Executive Director Summerlea Kashar announced last year that the museum would be forced to vacate its longtime Mission Street location due to its landlord's decision to double the museum's rent, Kashar appeared to take the news in stride, if glumly. "This is just another challenge in the life of the Cartoon Art Museum," she said in a statement. "And given San Francisco's current commercial real estate market, it's not very surprising."
Although Kashar promised that the museum wasn't going away, the fact that until last week it had been without a home for over a year didn't bode well for its future. But that's all in the past now, and a new chapter is about to begin at 781 Beach Street.
“We’ve been through the moving process before, and that in-between time is agonizing,” curator Andrew Farago told the Chronicle. “The real estate market in the Bay Area and especially San Francisco ... is so unpredictable, you can’t take anything for granted. (But) we had confidence everything was going to work out.”
The Examiner reports that the museum benefited from San Francisco’s Nonprofit Displacement Mitigation Fund, and that a loan from the fund was part of what made the new location possible. The Beach Street spot is roughly the same size at the old Mission Street museum, and Farago is already planning out the first exhibit — tentatively focused on the Summer of Love’s 50th anniversary. The Cartoon Art Museum is expected to reopen to the public at its new location next spring.
Previously: Cartoon Art Museum Kicked Out Of Their SoMa Spot