Well,

Since this article was posted relatively anonymously, I'm reluctant to
start a thread, but this is an extremely biased view of what Harry Parker
did (and he couldn't have done *anything* all by himself!).  His side is
nowhere represented.  And, it sounds to me that Lee Miller (curator) is
quoted, not only out of context, but in such a way as to imply that Miller
opposes the director (Parker's) decision.

I don't know how many of you have 3 million pounds of stone sitting around
in storage (storage that you have to pay for out of a disappearing budget)
for 54 years.  But one has to wonder, if the reconstruction will ever
happen, if the Spanish monastery stones are in keeping with the mission of
the museum, if the cost of storage, curation, registration, inventory are
worth it after all those years with little hope of
installation/reconstruction.   If Parker did give this away to the monks in
Chico, it seems a far more appropriate home for the stuff than the
warehouse!  And, Parker surely did not "give" the stuff away without the
full knowledge and backing of his Board of Directors!

This article could do with a good deal more criticism for its inflamatory
and distorted nature, but I think museum folks all catch the drift here,
especially since Walter Biller (the author and leader of the Knights of the
Spanish Abbey) quotes himself liberally.  Please spare me from such
anti-museological drivel!

This opinion is clearly my own, I am not speaking for my institution.

Suzanne Quigley, who was in an otherwise very pleasant mood today
[log in to unmask]

>This article is posted by the holder of the copyright:
>
>Museum Gives Away City's Ancient Spanish Abbey
>
>Museum Society Director Harry Parker gave away, in the words of de Young
>curator Lee Miller, "the most architectural portions" of over
>three-million pounds of elaborate handcarved Spanish monastery stones. The
>stones did not belong to the de Young Museum, but to the City and County
>of San Francisco. According to the City Charter, all City property must be
>valuated, receive public bids and Supervisor approval before it may be
>disbursed. The abbey was bequested to the City and County by newspaper
>publisher William R. Hearst in 1941. Hearst spent over a million
>depression-era dollars on the 12-16th century architectural monument. The
>relic stones of Santa Maria de Ovila, stored near the de Young in GG Park,
>were delivered by semi-trailers to a Catholic monastery of thirty
>cloistered monks in Vina, Ca., near Chico. "It sounds scandalous to me.
>There seems to be some arrogance towards the law," Supervisor Terence
>Hallinan told the Western Edition newspaper, which broke the story on July
>10. "I always assumed the stones were there, and someday we would do
>something with them."
>
>History editor Walter Biller says reconstruction in SF was always
>possible. He was developing a modern privately funded proposal for a San
>Francisco reconstruction. "I can't believe Parker had any idea of the
>abbey's extreme value and architectural importance," Biller said. "Even
>remedial research in the de Young's own magazine (Pacific Art Review)
>points up its title is held by the City (not the de Young), and gloats on
>its historical and financial pricelessness." Biller says that Parker gives
>his own account of the giveaway in the July 14 Examiner, four days after
>the Western Edition revelations. "I can't comment on that rebuttal article
>except to say there's something very wrong." The de Young actually tried
>to give away the abbey before. On May 18, 1963, City Attorney Thomas
>O'Conner ruled the historic relic was City property and must meet that
>criteria in the Charter.
>
>Biller has studied the monastery for some years. He says, "In 1941, famed
>architect Julia Morgan drew elevations and had a model built. It is often
>told by guides at the de Young that the abbey is not rebuildable after a
>series of postwar fires, but in 1959, after the worst and final fire the
>year earlier, architect Walter Steilberg, who worked closely with Julia
>Morgan, did an exhaustive stone-by-stone survey for the Supervisors. He
>reported 85% of the stones-nearly 1600 tons of the multi-building
>complex-were buildable. Steilberg knew the abbey better than anybody-he
>took it apart and crated it near Madrid, Spain, in 1931."  Hearst once
>owned another prize monastery, from Sacramenia, Spain, which was
>reconstructed in Florida in 1952 by two private developers. Today it is a
>popular North Miami Beach site and a National Registered Landmark. Biller
>is coordinating a growing citizens' group, "Knights of the Spanish Abbey"
>to help illuminate the abbey's beauty and history. ([log in to unmask])
>-Article by Margaret Heller & Walter Biller