Irked Zingg backed off $300,000 art donation Former Chico State president wanted name removed from campus Recital Hall

photo courtesy of Natasha Doron/The Orion
Inside Chico State’s recital hall when, in 2017, feminist activist Gloria Steinem spoke.

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. read more