by Dave Waddell
posted July 31
After Chico State’s spanking new recital hall was christened in 2016, it came as a shock to some faculty that it was named for retiring university President Paul Zingg and his wife.
But today, what was once the Paul and Yasuko Zingg Recital Hall goes by the stripped-down name of Recital Hall.
Why did the university quietly remove the name of its former president?
The short of it is that Paul Zingg, in 2021, feeling ignored by the university he long led and disrespected by his successor, came to want it that way. He also wanted back the art collection, appraised at more than $300,000, that he had gifted to Chico State’s Janet Turner Print Museum as part of the naming deal.
University officials promptly granted Zingg’s requests, and the word “Rescinded,” in big, black letters, is stamped across the documents that originally described and memorialized the agreement. The Recital Hall was officially named for the Zinggs in May 2016. Their names were removed in September 2021, said university spokesperson Andrew Staples.
Some sense of the unraveling of the Zingg arrangement is provided in emails and other documents obtained from Chico State under a Public Records Act request submitted by this reporter. Based on the records the university slowly disclosed over several months, the gift agreement seems to have fallen apart because Zingg’s successor as university president, Gayle Hutchinson, did not grant his oft-stated wish to be invited to campus for an event focused on the gifted art. After five years of waiting for that invitation, Zingg, in an exasperated email, announced he had “had it” and backed out of his pledge.
The naming of the university Recital Hall for the Zinggs was accomplished — with little if any transparency — on the eve of his retirement after his 12-year presidency that ended in 2016. It came a few months after Chico State’s Academic Senate gave Zingg and two other administrators a vote of no-confidence.
The gift agreement was signed by three people: Zingg, his wife Yasuko, and Ahmad Boura, one of Zingg’s subordinates in the Office of the President. Boura is vice president for University Advancement and chief executive officer for the University Foundation, a nonprofit university auxiliary that operates as the steward of gifts and endowments. He sought and received written approval to name the Recital Hall for the Zinggs from California State University Chancellor Timothy White.
Some found the deal “a bit incestuous,” as one faculty member put it. Boura was quoted claiming he informed academic senators of the naming, but several faculty members in attendance remembered no such disclosure and it was not recorded in meeting minutes.
In a recent email interview, Zingg, who is in his late 70s and a Danville resident since 2017, said he has “moved on from the disappointment of that episode. … I wish to be remembered for what I accomplished at Chico State as one of the University’s longest serving presidents. And not through the actions or agenda of others who failed to acknowledge, support, and steward a significant gift for the benefit of the University, its students, and the larger Chico and North State communities.”
Zingg added: “BTW, the naming of the recital hall was neither a request nor a condition of mine. This was offered to me by Boura and approved by Chancellor White to acknowledge the significance of the gift and to serve as a potential magnet for other large gifts.”
Staples, the university spokesperson, said the naming was done “to honor President Zingg’s generous gift. When he made a request to alter the gift agreement and have his name removed from the recital hall and his art returned, we honored his request promptly and respectfully.”
Asked about Zingg’s claim that the naming was Boura’s idea, Staples said: “We’d disagree with that statement. It is our recollection that President Zingg was very interested in securing naming rights for the recital hall.”
Staples added: “The University was very appreciative of the artwork and said so publicly. He was publicly acknowledged by President Hutchinson at the grand opening of the building and was recognized for his gift and a guest speaker for the soft opening and first concert in the Hall bearing his name. As a prominent donor to our arts programs, he has subsequently been invited to many signature events, as is our practice. Anytime we displayed the artwork, we acknowledged it as part of the gift creating the Paul and Yasuko Zingg Collection and noted we looked forward to more showcases to come. Future exhibitions never came to fruition because of the revocation of the artwork, therefore missing any opportunity to honor him further.”
In 2016, Zingg’s 86-piece art collection was assigned a fair market value of $313,675 by a professional appraiser. The university actually received 22 pieces valued at $29,000.
The now-rescinded gift agreement called the Janet Turner Print Museum “a most appropriate home” for the Zingg collection, which included scores of fine prints, as well as paintings and other art works. The museum’s mission is to advance “the art of printmaking by making its international collection accessible to the people of Northern California and beyond.”
Zingg is a knowledgeable collector and some of his prints filled “gaps” in the Turner collection, said Catherine Sullivan, who came to Chico State in 1968 as a printmaking/art history major and retired 51 years later as the Turner’s curator. She had been retired for a couple of years when Zingg’s art was returned.
“I always had cordial relations with Paul and appreciated the astuteness of his print collection and a bequest that would have added important artists that support the Turner collection mission,” Sullivan said. “His background gave administrative understanding and support to our very specific art museum and its role in the arts mission of the university.
“ … Paul’s collection is very interesting, and as the former curator I was most interested in the artists that worked with Crown Point Press [in San Francisco] … At that time those artists were largely unrepresented in the Turner collection and also have larger than just regional importance in the larger art world. Paul also has some prints representing his interest in golf that would have been an interesting addition.”
But it was not to be.
On May 31, 2021, Zingg sent an email to Daria Booth, the advancement director for the university’s College of Humanities and Fine Arts, of which the Janet Turner is a part. Zingg referenced a conversation he had 18 months earlier with Booth, who is also Chico State’s senior director of philanthropy.
“I’m still waiting for an invitation from Gayle [Hutchinson] that it’s now OK for me to visit the campus – where I was president for 13 years and, as Chancellor White said, put the place on the map for all the right reasons,” Zingg wrote.
“Well, I’ve had it. I am beginning the process of withdrawing my art gift. More than shabby personal treatment, the terms of that gift — access to students, access to the community, strengthened campus/community partnerships in the arts, announcement of the gift — have not been honored by the University.
“I see no positive way forward. It is clear Gayle neither supports that gift and a commitment to the arts nor is capable of showing me any respect. She has never defended that gift. My colleagues in the CSU have never seen anything like this. Neither have I. Enough.
“Please let the folks in the Janet Turner Museum know to start packing my works and I will be up at a convenient time to retrieve them. I will want Yasuko’s and my name taken off that building, too, once the art work is returned. She is more upset than me and I will not see her humiliated another day. Gayle and Ahmad [Boura] can explain to the campus and community why. But I am sure that will not be a true accounting. What a disgrace.”
Two months later, in July 2021, Boura informed Zingg in a brief letter that the gift agreement had been voided. He promised the prompt return of the Zinggs’ art collection and the removal of their names from the recital hall.
In September 2021, Zingg sent an email to Booth, in which he asserted “neither Ahmad nor Gayle have responded directly to me. … Simple matters of respect and courtesy should move Gayle to a president to president outreach. I am not waiting for that to happen.”
Invited to respond to Zingg’s criticisms, Hutchinson replied that she has “a great deal of respect for Dr. Zingg’s contributions to the University. The decision to change the name of the recital hall was made at his request.”
As for Zingg’s art, “the collection will eventually go to a museum or gallery which values it,” he said. “It’s about the gift, not the donor.”
Dave Waddell, a longtime ChicoSol contributor, is a professor emeritus in journalism at Chico State.
The bigger disgrace brought on our community by Gayle Hutchinson was when she stopped the Orange Street Shelter Project Proposal. In the middle of a declared Shelter Crisis, with people dying on the sidewalk, we provided her data that showed shelters reduce or have no effect on the crime rate and she said no to a $million dollar grant, a willing landlord and a community in crisis. That decision she made has exacerbated our shelter crisis and cost many citizens their lives. That is a shame.