The di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, a Napa museum with an extensive collection of post-war Northern California art, announced today that it will transform two of its spaces into permanent rental venues and open a satellite museum in San Francisco. The announcement was presented as “a sustainable path forward” amid longstanding financial challenges.
Renovations will begin in July on the museum’s Gatehouse Gallery and the di Rosa residence, to better court event rentals like weddings and corporate gatherings. (Most Napa wineries cannot host weddings due to the 1990 Winery Definition Ordinance; the di Rosa is a rare, preexisting exemption.) Gallery Two and the Sculpture Meadow will remain open on a reservation basis during the 18 months of construction.
The changes also come with reductions in staff, which today’s announcement characterized as “a difficult but necessary step towards lowering operational expenses.” The museum, which currently employs nine full-time and seven part-time staff, will lay off two full-time and six part-time employees in July. All the part-time employees work in visitor experiences.
On Aug. 9, di Rosa will open the Incorrect Museum, an exhibition and education program in the former McEvoy Foundation for the Arts within the Minnesota Street Project complex. The first show will be Far Out: Northern California Art from the di Rosa Collection, featuring work by Joan Brown, Enrique Chagoya, Jay DeFeo, Mildred Howard and Peter Saul. Admission to the Incorrect Museum will be free.
This is not the first satellite space for the museum, which opened di Rosa Downtown at 1300 First St. in Napa in December 2024. Exhibitions will continue here as well, where the group show Second Nature is on view through June 1.
