Video: Driving by the Laney College tower on Mar. 5, 2026. (Video: Oakland Report. Song excerpt: “Laney” by Healing Potpourri.)
Oakland Report examines the data behind the decision-making that affects Oaklanders’ lives. Today we look at the Peralta Community College District’s plan to downsize and relocate Laney College’s art gallery — and at the two pop-up galleries students opened to preserve spaces for student art.
The college stepped back — and students stepped up
Every Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m., the doors of the Werkshack Gallery at 481 25th Street give way to a bustling crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder, laughing, conversing, expressing themselves amongst the artworks that adorn the walls.12
From vividly colored paintings, to intricate sculptures, to lively woodworks and ceramics, students from across the Peralta Community College District gather to display their work as people from all over Oakland come together to experience it.
Raha Banoo, Kiki Reitano, and Finn Jordan, and a group of Laney College students who organized this exhibit, did so in reaction to the decommissioning of the June Steingart Art Gallery — also known as the Laney Gallery — which closed in May after nearly three decades.3
Mourning the loss of another art space in the Bay Area — and what they described as an administration that remained passive in the aftermath of such a decision — they founded their club, The Society of Artists and Makers, with the goal of continuing to display student creations.
Almost immediately, their cause gained traction: alongside a second exhibition at Golden Outside Cafe at 543 Athol Avenue, they received hundreds of submissions from student artists, the organizers said, and an enthusiastic, diverse reception at both venues.
The Werkshack show, which runs through Aug. 29, displays artwork by 23 students enrolled at Berkeley City College, College of Alameda, Laney College and Merritt College.
Key findings:
The Peralta district’s relocation plan cuts the gallery from 922 assignable square feet to 200 — a 78% reduction. That is the deepest proportional cut of the 18 users in the campus’ landmark administration tower — and the gallery is the only space being moved off the Laney campus.4
The gallery’s dedicated exhibition storage — 290 square feet — is eliminated entirely. Exhibition space itself falls from 632 square feet to 200, in an atrium the plan says will be set up “TBD based on exhibition.”
The plan lists one benefit and one drawback for the move. Under “Pros” it records “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” it reads in full: “Not on-campus.”
Six of the tower’s 18 users gain space in the plan. The overall reduction across the building is 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383 — and the gallery’s 78% cut is the steepest on a percentage basis.
The district’s facilities problem is real and documented. An independent consultant told the Peralta board in April that 38 of the district’s buildings (40%) are rated “deficient,” and that Laney has more of them than any other campus.
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The Society of Artists and Makers is not merely a story about individual artistic passion that has blossomed far beyond expectation.
Theirs also is a story of an energetic community’s initiative, anchored in a pursuit to continue to keep the arts alive and creators uplifted, while the district’s own plan assigns their gallery the smallest remaining footprint.
A history behind Laney Gallery, and why it is being shut down
Founded in 1998, Laney Gallery was named after June Steigart, one of the first female instructors of the college’s art department, who taught from 1966 until her death in 1991 and was described by the college as “the soul of the Laney Art Department.”5
Since then, it has been a center for professional development, artistic expression, and student culture on the Laney campus, with a wide range of exhibitions in various mediums: traditional painting, printmaking, woodworking, mixed media, and more. Some notable recent displays include their Spring 2025 Clay Paper Wood show,6 the Stoked wood-fired ceramics exhibition,7 and an Annual Juried Student Show.8
The gallery’s final exhibition, Here & Now, was on display from March 23 to May 14, displaying art from students across the Peralta district’s four community colleges. Artists, faculty, and community members gathered both in celebration of Laney Gallery’s almost 30-year existence, and in grief at its pending closure. The show was curated by gallery director Susanna Stromberg with support from student artists — among them Banoo and Jordan.9
The June Steingart Gallery’s retirement, however, wasn’t an event done in isolation. It was a part of a larger decommission of the Laney College Tower, which hosts not only the gallery space, but student services, administrative offices, and the campus’ counseling and wellness centers.10
The landmark Laney College tower is set to be decommissioned
The decision to shut down the tower was made by the Laney College interim leadership, including interim president Becky Opsata and the Peralta Community College District administration.
District administrators have cited the building’s unreliable facilities — specifically its elevators — its recurring need for servicing, and overall difficulty in maintenance as primary reasons for the tower’s closure.11
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At a March 11 presentation to faculty and classified staff, deputy chancellor and chief operating officer Greg Nelson described the tower as a financial “albatross” and said that during his tenure the district had “put probably $5 million into that building and it hasn’t helped it at all.”
The most recent relocation plan, dated April 16, 2026, continues this narrative, stating that “the building’s structural, mechanical, and building systems are original and have reached the end of their functional life cycle.”
The plan, which covers a nine-story building constructed in 1971 whose occupants use roughly 28,483 square feet, details the proposed changes of location for each service within the tower — most of them elsewhere on Laney’s campus.
The gallery takes the deepest cut of any use in the building
Oakland Report examined the plan’s four relocation summary tables and recomputed each user’s change in assignable square feet.
Across all 18 users, the tower’s occupied space falls 27%, from 26,476 assignable square feet to 19,383. But the reduction is not evenly distributed.
Six users — business and administrative services, counseling, mental health, social sciences faculty, part-time faculty, and career technical education staff — gain space. Twelve users lose space.
The June Steingart Gallery loses the most, proportionally, of any of them.
The gallery currently occupies 922 assignable square feet on the tower’s ground floor, split between 632 square feet of exhibition space and 290 square feet of dedicated exhibition storage.
The plan reduces exhibition space to 200 square feet and eliminates the storage entirely.
The gallery also is the only occupant leaving campus. The plan relocates the gallery to the atrium of the Peralta District Service Center at 333 E. 8th Street, several blocks away, with setup “TBD based on exhibition needs.”
Under the heading “Pros,” the plan lists a single line: “Display of student art at District.” Under “Cons,” also a single line: “Not on-campus.”
The move was scheduled for completion by the end of summer 2026. A separate phasing page directs that “Art Gallery supplies packed, labeled and moved to storage” at the end of May. The off-campus destination has been in the plan since at least its March 4 draft.
When asked about this relocation, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan stated that they were given no formal updates on the Laney Gallery other than its decommissioning, which left the summer an empty node of artistic exhibition— and, to them, left the gallery’s future unknown. This, they said, was a common sentiment among staff members and students alike.
The plan itself was not secret. A draft was presented to the Laney Facilities Planning Committee on February 2. Opsata circulated a feedback form afterward, and successive versions have been posted publicly on the college’s website.
The feedback form, however, was open only to faculty and staff.
It is reasonable to consider the possibility that a document published as a facilities schedule, and consulted primarily through governance committees, would not reach the students whose exhibition space it reassigns.
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“The palpable feeling of love”: a want for humanity and connection
The driving force of The Society of Artists and Makers’ project was a sentiment of Oaklanders building something for themselves, by themselves, free from the constraints of bureaucratic limitations and reductions. The closure of the Laney Gallery came as a devastating shock to many, but the students felt that remaining passive was not an option.
Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all said that they, along with many other students and faculty members, could no longer wait for updates that they didn’t know would come. The uncertainty only deepened their own commitment — and as they would later learn — the campus community’s commitment to band together and independently forge an artistic space of their own.
Above all else, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan all commented on the “palpable feeling of love” that emanated from their pop-up galleries — not only from their friends and family, but also people from the other Peralta district colleges and the greater Bay Area who care about the arts. Banoo said that many visitors who only planned to stop by briefly to see the pieces lingered for hours, basking in the conversational and animated atmosphere.
The student organizers expressed that beyond appreciating the student artworks, the greatest outcome of their club was being able to feel the genuine human connection, both interpersonally between people who visited the galleries and even more so, between the people and the art.
Banoo emphasized that in a tumultuous era for creativity — including the evolving world of AI in the technological hub of the Bay Area — handmade artwork conveys lived experience that builds the groundwork for authenticity and real kinship: all things that a machine cannot do. To them, it was clear that this is what the community needed by how they showed up and stayed. Reitano described it as a statement on today’s isolating times where “we are craving nothing more than being around real people and something actually tangible.”
Other considerations and counterpoints
The Peralta district’s plan is a proposal and a schedule, not a completed action; square footages describe assignable space, and a 200-square-foot allocation in a shared atrium is not directly comparable to a 632-square-foot dedicated room in either direction — an atrium may accommodate a larger reception than the floor plan suggests, or a smaller one.
The plan’s four section totals sum to 26,476 assignable square feet, about 2,000 short of the 28,483 square feet the same document says tower users occupy; that gap is unexplained in the text and likely reflects a difference between assignable and gross measurement.
The percentage cut is a measure of space, not of programming: nothing in the plan states how many exhibitions the gallery will mount at the district office.
The district’s facilities problem is documented and expensive. An independent consultant told the Peralta board on April 28 that 38 buildings districtwide (40%) are classified “deficient” under Division of the State Architect assessments — the “strongest candidates” for renovation or replacement — and that Laney has 13 of them, more than any other campus.
Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson noted that the term “deficient” is a decision-making tool rather than a safety finding, and the consultant agreed the buildings currently are safe to use.
The consultant also reported that Peralta’s building footprint exceeds what its enrollment and its shift toward online instruction require, and cautioned that “the District cannot approach every building as though long-term reinvestment is equally viable.”12
Not everyone in the art department describes the move as a loss. Beth Maher, Laney’s dean of liberal arts, told The Citizen (the district’s student newspaper) that the district office is in some ways more public — “there’ll be eyes on it at every board meeting, every event” — and that it offers better air conditioning, more open hours, and room to “spill out and have 100 people for a reception if we wanted to.”
Art department chair Mary Catherine Bassett, who said “it’s sort of like the rug’s being pulled a little,” told The Citizen the gallery’s name will not change: “It would be a disservice to the lineage, the heritage, the history and the community to rename it anything other [than after June Steingart].” Bassett also said she hopes the department can host exhibitions elsewhere on the Laney campus, including in the theater building now under construction.
A silver lining
The Werkshack exhibition runs through Aug. 29, with a closing reception that Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.; the Golden Outside exhibition runs on the cafe’s morning hours through the same date.
Though The Society of Artists and Makers currently has no upcoming events planned after that date, they insist that this is only the beginning. With or without help from administrative officials, they say they will continue to pave the way for consistently recognizing student art, forging genuine connections, and uplifting Peralta and the greater Oakland community.
Even though the past few months have been a stressful roller coaster of ups and downs, Banoo, Reitano, and Jordan said they are proud of what they have accomplished.
“Initally, it was just wanting to keep having a place to showcase our art. But now, this has become the brightest silver lining possible of the gallery closing.”
— Raha Banoo, co-founder, Society of Artists and Makers
The district’s plan and the students’ response to it are answers to the same question, asked at different scales: what will happen to the June Steingart Gallery after the Laney administration tower is decommissioned?
Peralta’s answer, written into a facilities schedule, is that 922 square feet of dedicated gallery on a campus of 13 deficient buildings is a cost it can no longer carry, and that 200 square feet in a district atrium will have to do.
The students’ answer, worked out over a summer in a shared workspace on 25th Street and in a cafe on Athol Avenue, is that the space was never the point — but that someone has to keep providing one.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Phoebe Vo is an incoming second year student at University of California, Berkeley, where she works as a reporter for the Daily Californian university newspaper. She has more than five years of experience in journalism. Her goal is to continue her career covering issues important to the Bay Area. Phoebe is a participant in Oakland Report’s inaugural summer internship program.
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Oakland Art Murmur contributors. “Society of Artists & Makers student show.” Oakland Art Murmur website, accessed Aug. 16, 2026. https://oaklandartmurmur.org/event/peralta-society-of-artists-makers-student-show/
Oakland Art Murmur contributors. “Gallery at the Werkshack.” Oakland Art Murmur website, accessed Aug. 16, 2026. https://oaklandartmurmur.org/venue/gallery-at-the-werkshack/
Bracken, Erik. “June Steingart Gallery hosts final exhibition in the Laney Tower.” The Citizen, Apr. 24, 2026. https://peraltacitizen.com/2026/04/24/june-steingart-gallery-hosts-final-exhibition-in-the-laney-tower/
Peralta Community College District contributors. “Laney College administration tower relocation plan.” Peralta Community College District, Apr. 16, 2026. https://laney.edu/hubfs/April%2016%20LC_Administration%20Tower_Relocation%20Plan.pdf
Laney College contributors. “June Steingart Gallery.” Laney College art department webpage, accessed Aug. 16, 2026. https://laney.edu/art/june-steingart-gallery
Laney College contributors. “Clay paper wood.” Laney College event webpage, accessed Aug. 16, 2026. https://laney.edu/event/clay-paper-wood
Bracken, Eric. “National art exhibition ‘STOKED’ showcases wood-fired possibilities for Laney ceramics program.” The Citizen, Sept. 24, 2025. https://peraltacitizen.com/2025/09/24/national-art-exhibition-stoked-showcases-wood-fired-possibilities-for-laney-ceramics-program/
Laney Art Gallery contributors. “The June Steingart Gallery at Laney College is excited to announce The Third Annual Juried Student Exhibition.” Instagram / @laneyartgallery, Mar. 18, 2026. https://www.instagram.com/p/DWB5QMnAoFa/
Brewer, Chanda. “HERE & NOW draws a crowd at June Steingart Gallery.” Laney College, Apr. 21, 2026. https://laney.edu/news/here-now-draws-a-crowd-at-june-steingart-gallery
Dennerle, Ethan and Nathaniel Delgado. “Laney College tower to retire.” The Citizen, Feb. 3, 2026. https://peraltacitizen.com/2026/02/03/laney-college-tower-to-retire/
Faine, Eliot. “The changing face of Laney College.” The Citizen, Apr. 1, 2026. https://peraltacitizen.com/2026/04/01/the-changing-face-of-laney-college/
Premnath-Ray, Leo. “40% of Peralta buildings are in ‘deficient’ condition, according to update on facilities master plan.” The Citizen, May 13, 2026. https://peraltacitizen.com/2026/05/13/40-of-peralta-buildings-are-in-deficient-condition-according-to-update-on-facilities-master-plan/
I want to compliment Phoebe Vo on this article. It’s super well written and thorough and brings a lot of life to a kind of dry subject — the relocation of a Laney art gallery. But most important and most difficult to find in news coverage, it gives equal space and depth to the different opinions on the issue. Wishing her a long and satisfying career in journalism.
I mean it can be argued that one department vs. another needs the space but this does speak to an overall diminishing quality of life. Money gets spent on who knows what and it all just cumulatively adds to the crapificaion of life - whether inflicted on us by our incompetent government or dollar hungry private equity it seems like things are just getting a little less enjoyable everywhere we go.