Views on Art: Harry S. Parker, III

Before his retirement in 2005, Harry S. Parker, III sat at the helm of San Francisco’s largest public art institution, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where he directed the renovation and revitalization of its buildings and collections. Before that, he did much of the same for the Dallas Museum of Art in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, and before that, he was Chairman of the Department of Education at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

In a contemporaneous article written for The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Parker references a revitalization of the Victorian sense of public responsibility and describes a proactive approach to the museum’s public outreach that includes the exploration of less conventional methods and techniques. Parker claims of the Museum’s approach, “We work in that area were viewer meets object, and human contact becomes the basic purpose of the object’s preservation.” [1] Much of this philosophy is evident throughout the interview as they discuss the Department’s latest projects, from high school classroom visits, to open studios, to a live sculpture demonstration by the artist to the king of the Ivory Coast, and even a medieval jousting tournament in Central Park, complete with period costumes.

[1] Parker, Harry S., III. “In Search of Human Contact.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Volume XXVII, Number 4, December 1968.