The stalled deal for CSUMB to buy the Steinbeck Center means a loss of culture in Salinas. For now.

In the urgency of negotiations over the proposed buyout of the National Steinbeck Center by CSU Monterey Bay's University Corporation—a complex deal involving the city, a dozen organizations, the state Department of Finance and other interests—two of the center's major exhibition halls, Ag 1 and Ag 2 (the two huge rooms in back), have gone dormant pending the sale.

That means a combined roughly 4,000 square feet of space for art, historic and cultural exhibitions, out of commission until a deal goes through. This was not unexpected.

"We don't have rotating exhibitions in our budget for fiscal year 2015," says Marcos Cabrera, the center's Curator of Education and Public Programs. That's because if the sale goes through, the two exhibition spaces will be among those the university will take over.

In anticipation, Deborah Silguero-Stahl, former Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, and Jewel Gentry, former Assistant Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, have both left the center—Silguero-Stahl to pursue her doctorate, and Gentry went to the Salinas Public Library.

Both Ag 1 and Ag 2 are empty for now.

"Exhibitions take over a year to plan," says the center's Executive Director, Colleen Bailey. "You make a commitment, you curate them."

They decided to close the spaces instead of fill them for indefinite periods of time, which would cost money. At least not until the decision by the state on the redevelopment agency debt forgiveness that has stalled the purchase.

"We thought the deal was going to happen a lot earlier. We didn't want to make false promises to anybody," she says. 

In earlier years, Bailey says, the spaces hosted photographs by Dorothea Lange, paintings by David Ligare, an ambitious traveling exhibition called The Wonder of Learning (which promoted the Reggio Emilia style of education) in partnership with First 5 of Monterey County that was too big to fit anywhere else in the county. More recently, paintings by children's book author/illustrator Belle Yang and graffiti by Liam da Leo. The Weston family photography exhibition was the last exhibition to occupy either space. It came down in June.

It doesn't mean that programming is stalled.

Ag 1 and 2 are available for rental. There was a recent mariachi festival held in Ag 1, which came with Mexican-themed art and objects on display, and the space has hosted a tequila tasting. Other venues within the Steinbeck Center will host a youth poetry slam that Cabrera is involved in, a talk by author Julie Reynolds (Blood in the Fields) takes place Oct. 7. There is a collaboration with SpectorDance on the gang-related East West at Sherwood Hall Oct. 24 and at SpectorDance in Marina Oct. 25.

"We've been talking about doing a pop-up strategy, which is taking exhibits outside to the community and inviting them back to the Steinbeck Center," Bailey says. As San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has done during their closure for rebuilding.

There's hope that the deal will go through and that CSUMB will continue to curate exhibitions in the two big rooms. But that is a few moons into the future.

For now, it's a major loss of space for art and culture in Salinas (the Steinbeck Center is a popular anchor of the Oldtown Salinas First Friday Artwalk, happening 5-8pm this Friday). How long depends on what happens at the Oct. 21 city council meeting during which another case will be made to the oversight board to forgive the debt that's hung up the sale.

"We're trying to keep costs down," Bailey says. "It's a loss and a gain."

There are many fingers crossed that the gain is coming.