I would like to respond to what are some very sound criticisms by Suzanne
Quigley based solely on the short article we published. I should take them
one at a time. Although I appreciate the grammar discussion going on here
regarding bequeathed and bequest (it is quite fun really) please forgive
any such errors I make here. I am on-line and haven't the time for that
sort of editing at this stage. Off the cuff, ok?
I am Walter Biller, one of several "leaders" of the Knights of the Spanish
Abbey, the coauthor of the article in question. I did not intend any any
way to hide my identity, and can be reached by e-mail at [log in to unmask]
I tried to make that clear by posting my e-mail address (actually my
history newsletter) at The San Francisco Almanac, but in future articles I
will be more clear.
I agree with Suzanne that the first sentence is convoluted, appearing to
vie Parker against Miller, and will correct the wording in future
articles. Criticism is taken. As far as representing Parker's side of the
argument, another very sound point. Part of the problem here is upon
attempting to receive a response from the de Young director we were told
to wait two days for a response, which we agreed to heartily. Two days
later an evasive, unsupported response appeared in the San Francisco
Examiner, one which clearly indicated Parker did not intend to confront
our criticisms head on. We have taken that up with the writer of the
article, in the San Francisco Chronicle's July 14, 1995 issue, which is
available to all on the internet, or through the EBSCO electronic files,
as I understand it. As I cannot publish that article here (that would make
for a violation of AOL's copyright rules as well as the Examiner's
copyright) and as the article represents little of merit outside a poor
accounting of the history of the abbey, numerous reiterations of the
statement that the abbey is "a white elephant" and "a tumble of rubble"
and "what a white elephant" and a "pile of jumbled stones," and that
Parker decided it was "time to fish or cut bait" (with our argument being
that nobody appointed him the fisherman in this case) the dierctor makes
several rebuttal arguments.
The primary argument is that his museum trustees agreed to the exchange
through a complicated legal procedure, amounting in essence to a
"permanent loan" and that if the monks do not "treat the stones in a
manner agreeable to us" that the de Young can take them back after a ten
year trial period. Our arguments here (and please bear with me Suzanne, as
in closing I will tie this all together) is that: A. Permanent loan of a
3-million pound stone building is a ridiculous notion; B. San Francisco
city law is very clear about city property and the procedure for
disbursal. Under our laws you cannot give away City property without
evaluation, public notice and bid. Any such agreements, as Parker and
Miller have both referred to in separate articles in our local media, with
or without approval of the trustees, would violate the charter and be
without legal merit. C. We have seen no evidence that the trustees were
notified, and if they were, no evidence that they were duly notified that
the abbey's title did not belong to the museum. That is fact, borne out by
a precedent ruling on May 18, 1963 by the City Attorney, as the article
indicates. At the very best, this massive exchange of property was done
without even a rudimentary title search, something that would be standard
procedure with a house, a car or any other sizeable property of this
nature. I cannot say much more about this aspect as higher powers are
looking into it as we are to understand.
Another point Mr. Parker makes in the Examiner article is that the monks
have a moral right to the stones, as they are Cistercians and the
monastery was built by Cistercians. On face value this is an attractive
argument, outside the secular legal issues. However, it becomes less
attractive when you take into consideration these factors: A. Santa Maria
de Ovila has not been used for religious purposes since 1835, nearly a
century before it was removed from Spain; B. Stone monasteries of this
nature had basic life-giving and protecting qulaities in medieval Spain,
necessitating their great mass and scale, qualities which seem to fly in
the face of austere Cistercian values, when put in the context of 21st
century California; C. We are not at all convinced, and I have spoken to
several experts on this idea, that thirty men over 200 miles from a major
city will ever muster the resources to do a satisfactorily reconstruction.
These monasteries were built with the patronage of nearby Cathedral
cities. In the case of Santa Maria de Ovila in Spain, that cathedral city
was nearby Siguenza, which offered seven churches and was a thriving
crossroads with a very powerful bishop (during the initial building
years), with other patron bishops to follow. Ovila was to protect and
serve Siguenza, as it did for nearly 800 years, and vice-versa. And as far
as manpower, Ovila was home to 400-1000 monks, depending on what century
you chose to drop by. Thirty monks in Vina, remember, with all the other
responsibilities which will still be there, whether you had thirty or
three thousand. By comparison, in San Francisco we have virtually
unlimited manpower, numerous "cathedral city" resources (such as the
University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University, to name just
two of hundreds, and architects, engineers, and equipment galore.
Another point Parker made is that the abbey, when built, would be open to
the public. Infortunately, when contacted by the writer of the article the
monk quoted, a Brother Paul, stated there was disagreement among the monks
as to whether the monastery would be open three days a week to the public,
as Parker stated. "It's hard to get thirty monks to agree on anything"
Brother Paul told Examiner writer Craig Marine when explaining the lack of
sureness on that detail. Given the cloistered nature of Cistercian
monasteries, and the great distance from San Francisco through some very
hard country, the offer seems very token.
Now, Suzanne, let me address your most powerful arguments. First, that
storage of the stones was causing hardship for the de Young Museum. The
stones are kept in a wooded clearing in Golden Gate Park, at least 100
yards off the de Young property, and besides some drawings and letters and
a small wooden model, none of the abbey is any way is stored on the site
of the museum. Quite simply not an issue. Again, something our article
should point up more clearly, criticism taken. You'd have to live here to
know that. We'll fix it.
The final criticism, one addressed by another party in the newsgroup, is
that these stones should be repatriated to Spain. Sounds good on a moral
level, but there is a catch. Several actually. First of all, no one would
pay for it and Spain has enough ancient buildings to rebuild after the
Spanish Civil War without one more. Spain was demolished in the Spanish
Civil War, used as a testing ground for Hitler and Mussolini's new-age
weapons of war. (More on this later) Secondly, Hearst paid the owner of
the abbey over a half-million dollars for the abbey, and got full approval
of the Spanish Monuments Committee to do so. Third, Arthur Byne and
Mildred Stapley Byne, the art historians who brought the abbey to Hearst's
attention, and who brokered the sale through Parke-Bernet Gallery in New
York and the Spanish government, had very noble ulterior motives for the
move. They had great faith in Julia Morgan, the illustrious California
Beaux Artes architect that was to be responsible for the reconstruction in
the United States, and they had inside knowledge of what Marcos and gang
had planned for their beloved Madrid in a few short years. This is 1931
now, and the Spanish Civil War is a few short years away. As a matter of
fact, the shakey Republican government came to power as the abbey was
being taken apart. The Bynes knew that Madrid was ground zero for the
Marcos assaults, and they knew through their German and Italian
confidantes that those countries were already planning to aid Marcos. In
1936 it all came true, and in the battle over Madrid, which signalled the
outset of the war in 1936, the German Luftwaffe used the Tagus River, on
which Santa Maria sat, as a natural navigational route for their
devastating bomb runs. Without going into Spanish Civil War history, I can
tell you that Santa Maria would not have survived. Nearby Siguenza was
trashed, and is today but a fragement of what it once was. Only the great
catherdral survived, to speak of, and it lost its vaulted ceilings, aspe,
buttresses and more. It is still being rebuilt today, I am told. The Bynes
were above all historians, dealing in art only to serve their proactive
preservation goals, and they second-guessed history quite well, as any
good historian can do, particularly in their beloved homeland, and
particularly when given an inside track to Europe's elite.
I have one last point. I am not a museum basher. I spent six years of my
life at the Smithsonian Institution, and time at the Corcoran Gallery as
well, and have a deep respect for museums and their many problems. What
has happened here would never happen at either institution, or at most any
I imagine, and when I was made aware of what happened with the monastery I
was saddened and shocked, and my faith in museums was, for a moment,
shaken. Now that I realize the limited set of players that took part in
the transaction, I am not as bothered, and hope the de Young does not
suffer any through our activities to bring public notice to this issue.
To some degree, Harry Parker has made his bed and now he must sleep in it.
I have no personal feelings towards him, or his close curators, but I
represent the citizens of San Francisco and the preservation community,
and that dovetails very nicely with my reasons for loving democracy, as
well. We have the right to protest illegal acts, and I assure you that one
day, and probably sooner than later, our group will be vindicated. That's
in the hands of our city's legal systems.
Knights have been defending castles, and monks their abbies, for over a
millenium. We're simply carrying out that tradition in a democracy. One
last point, to which I also concede your criticism's merit. There are too
many quotes in the article from myself. One of the main reasons is that
people either don't know a thing about this forgotten treasure, and I have
studied it for years, or they do not want to get involved in an issue that
appears headed for the courts. Hence, Knights of the Spanish Abbey. We are
small but fast growing group of citizens that are courageous enough to
struggle for laws and democracy, and besides that, we were putting
together a very workable plan, with funding from private sources, when we
learned of the giveaway. We were going to rebuild this, and we still
intend to. (There are many stones left on the SF site, as well, as
compromise arrangements are always possible, too. We think there's enough
stone to go around.)
I hope you understand myself, and our Knights of the Spanish Abbey
mission, a little better now. We're really very nice people, with great
respect for museums, art, history and culture. I hope we can communicate
again towards a better understanding.
Sincerely,
Walter Biller
Editor & Publisher
The San Francisco Almanac
Knights of the Spanish Abbey
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SF Museum gives away city's 12 C. monastery
From: Suzanne Quigley <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 1995 09:20:00 -0500
Message-ID: <v01510100ac7899f76ab9@[166.84.195.200]>
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
|