The Drawing Room art gallery will shutter its Mission Street location barely a year after reopening, according to owner Renée DeCarlo.
A gallery sale will run from Friday, Sept. 12 through its final day on Sunday, Sept. 14.
This happened more quickly than DeCarlo anticipated. All of a sudden, the healthcare company that has been subsidizing the Drawing Room’s rent at 2675 Mission St. between 22nd and 23rd streets was defunded by President Donald Trump, she said.
DeCarlo asked to keep the company’s name confidential to protect this supporter of her gallery.
“There was no way I could do this without people helping support the rent,” DeCarlo said. “I’m not going to squat, and we have to go.”
On top of this, with the adjacent GameStop shutting down in 2024, the landlord lost their biggest source of income. The owner of the property would like to keep the space empty to show potential buyers.
“I don’t want to be a burden to the building which is being sold,” DeCarlo added. “We’re at the mercy of real estate.”
For DeCarlo, this scenario has been painfully familiar: The Drawing Room must move again.
This is the fifth location the Drawing Room has had since its launch in 2018. DeCarlo has now taught herself to call the disruptions “these opportunities of having to move.”
Even the remaining space, at 599 Valencia St. at the corner of 17th and Valencia streets, has an uncertain future.
David Levin, a former owner of the property, where Harrington Galleries stood for many years, confirmed that the current owner is in contract with a buyer. Particulars about the contract remain unknown; both the current owner and DeCarlo declined to comment.
The Drawing Room first opened at 2675 Mission St. for a year from December 2019 to November 2020, at a rent of $1 per month. Before it moved in, the space had sat empty for nine and a half years, according to DeCarlo.
Then the pandemic struck. The gallery took a four-year hiatus at the space, while remaining at its first location at 3260 23rd St. from November 2018 to November 2021.
DeCarlo moved to 780 Valencia St. from January 2021 to May 2022, and 210 Clement St. from 2022 to this February.
The 599 Valencia St. location, which opened in January 2024, has become a cultural magnet. Nearly 1,000 people turned out in the rain for the gallery’s opening Saturday night, DeCarlo said.
“This whole pop-up model and moving around all the time is really exhausting, and it needs so many resources,” said DeCarlo, whose staff has shrunk to two full-time and two part-time employees.
In the middle of last year, when the Drawing Room was invited to return to its old Mission location, DeCarlo saw it as insurance. “If Valencia Street ends up being a 30-day, you have to leave. We’ll have Mission Street.”
That has not turned out to be the case.
DeCarlo would like to find a permanent home for the Drawing Room. For now, though, she’s focused on the final chapter of the art gallery’s spot on Mission St.
From noon to 5 p.m. this Friday to Sunday, 2675 Mission St. will have a gallery sale on select works of art and DeCarlo’s drawings from over 25 years of work.
