Popular Bay Area museum closing after curator’s creepy hidden bathroom camera scandal

A Bay Area museum that operated for 42 years announced that it shut down last Sunday and faces an uncertain future, just weeks after a former curator was caught secretly recording party guests in the bathroom of his Berkeley home.

The San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum located at Fisherman’s Wharf is shuttering its doors, it said on its website, but left open the possibility of reopening in some form in the future.

The closure was apparently due to the ongoing fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic that saw businesses close, and the “slow recovery” that ensued, the museum said, something it struggled with ever since it made the move 10 years ago to the bayside location.

“For now, we will be packing up, taking time to regroup and determining what the next chapter of the Cartoon Art Museum should be,” it stated on the website.

Previously, the art museum was at 655 Mission Street but moved locations after rent doubled, SFGate reported.

Over 80,000 people have visited the museum, which offers classes for kids and exhibits to promote the art of cartooning.

The lease at the current location will be ending, said executive director Summerlea Kashar, but she promised, “We will not be disappearing.”

In June, the museum was facing another crisis when Andrew Farago, who was a curator, was arrested on 20 counts of invasion of privacy for using a camera to record the unsuspecting victims at a birthday bash.

The 50-year-old had hosted the party at his house on May 23, where adults and children used his bathroom.

He also apologized via email to his party guests, court records showed.

“I hid my phone in our bathroom for the purpose of spying on our guests, my closest friends in the world. I had never done anything like that before and don’t know what possessed me to do it,” he wrote in the note.

Farago lost his job as a result and was placed on administrative leave when the museum found out about the allegations.

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