{"id":162295,"date":"2026-02-03T19:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T19:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162295\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T19:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T19:01:07","slug":"sfmoma-pauses-free-first-thursdays-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/162295\/","title":{"rendered":"SFMOMA Pauses Free First Thursdays Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luck has run out for the budget-conscious arts lover: starting this week, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art<\/a> is pausing its First Thursdays program indefinitely. That four-hour window of free general admission once made for a great after-work activity or a budget date night, but in the absence of sustained outside funding, the museum will now \u201creassess\u201d the program. SFMOMA hopes to relaunch it at a later date.<\/p>\n

The move comes after a year of budget woes and staff layoffs<\/a>, and during a particularly hard time<\/a> for the local arts sector, which is seeing galleries, museums and longstanding arts institutions closing. <\/p>\n

For residents struggling with an ever-rising cost of living in the Bay Area, free entry is no insignificant thing; currently, SFMOMA\u2019s general admission is $30 a ticket.<\/p>\n

It might feel like First Thursdays have been around forever, but the program kicked off only five years ago in 2021, in the wake of the museum\u2019s pandemic closures. Over the years, the monthly event has been supported by a variety of sponsors and individual funders, including, recently, Google<\/a>. The next First Thursday would have taken place on Feb. 5, 4\u20138 p.m. <\/p>\n

And they weren\u2019t just open hours: First Thursdays were usually marked by special events and programming like December\u2019s \u201cGift Lab<\/a>.\u201d That event saw artists and educators hosting drop-in workshops on the museum\u2019s third floor, where visitors could make their own crafty gifts by hand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luck has run out for the budget-conscious arts lover: starting this week, the San Francisco Museum of Modern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162296,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":{"0":"post-162295","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-oakland","9":"tag-oakland-headlines","10":"tag-oakland-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}