Hearst Castle is still on track to open in about a month, barring the unforeseen in an ongoing road-repair project or other matters — and assuming that COVID-19 cases have diminished sufficiently for California’s pandemic guidelines for specialized large museums to allow reopening.
That’s according to Dan Falat, superintendent of the California State Parks district that includes the former San Simeon estate of newspaper magnate and art collector William Randolph Hearst.
Falat told San Luis Obispo Tribune he’s sticking by his rough estimate that the Castle would reopen by late March or early April. By then, the visitor attraction that impacts businesses throughout San Luis Obispo County will have been shuttered for two years.
First it was the pandemic. Then, even when those guidelines loosened, the Castle remained closed to the public because storm and other damage was discovered early last year beneath the top half of the steep road that leads from the visitor center and tour-bus loading area to the 127-acre hilltop estate.
Falat said in a Jan. 27 phone interview that the roadwork project is proceeding well and is on schedule.
In the meantime, with a sense of mounting urgency as calendar pages flip quickly toward the start of spring, the pace toward getting ready for the Castle’s reopening is picking up.
Museum Workers Preparing for Tours
A lot of that prep falls under the leadership of recently appointed museum director Cara O’Brien, who oversees matters ranging from guides and public outreach to maintaining, conserving and protecting the more than 20,000 priceless artifacts and artworks in the Castle’s collection.
(Hearst Castle photo)
What’s underway now on the hilltop, and to a lesser degree at the visitor center, she and Falat said, is intense, behind-the-scenes catch-up work that would be extremely difficult to do with dozens or hundreds of tours running every day.
O’Brien said those assignments have run the gamut from conserving a huge, heavy 17th century Belgian tapestry to “doing deeper cleaning and some finicky, detailed maintenance in the 60 — yes, 60 — bathrooms on the hilltop.”
As Falat said, “we’ve got to keep the Castle in top shape and looking good. But we don’t want to spoil the magic by having the troops doing the work while our visitors are ‘in the house.’”
“If the pandemic has given us any positives that we can look to for solace during this difficult time for everybody, it’s that we’ve had to ability to do the things we wouldn’t have been able to do,” he said.
Conservator Surprised By Some Artifacts
During the closure, O’Brien said collections staffers and conservators under contract have been able to take a closer look at some of the Castle’s less famous artifacts.
For instance, in the process of checking some other fabric treasures on the hilltop, O’Brien recalled, “a conservator happened to unfold and examine a quilt that had been displayed casually for years at the end of the bed in the loft of the lower South Duplex bedroom.”
The conservator found three previously undiscovered or unreported initials, “PAH,” embroidered in one corner of the bright blue-and-red-silk, Log Cabin-patterned quilt.
“We don’t know yet if the initials mean the quilt was made for Phoebe Apperson Hearst, William Randolph’s mother, or if she made it herself,” a still awed O’Brien said.
But assuming it was one or the other, she said, “we’re having it conserved, and then it will be displayed more prominently in that room.”
Elsewhere, the big Belgian tapestry is one of three in a set in the visitor center theater, a set that tells a story when all of them are hung together.
The antique textile, “The Conference of Scipio and Hannibal,” is about 20 feet wide by 13.8 feet high, according to O’Brien, and made from an undyed wool warp, dyed wool and silk and metallic threads weft.
New Guides Training for Tours
What other pre-reopening prep is happening on the hilltop and in the visitor center, at 750 Hearst Castle Road off Highway 1 about nine miles north of Cambria? As the potential date draws ever nearer, the more than 75 guides are heading into ramped-up, retrain-and-rehearse mode.
Although the monument has been closed for nearly two years, Falat said, the Castle’s hiring-and-training program continued.
“So, we have some new guides who haven’t given a tour at all yet for the public,” he said. ”I’ve got a whole cadre of staff for whom their only ‘hands-on’ knowledge of the Castle is this pandemic environment we’re in today.”
O’Brien said to help, they’ve been “practicing our timing and new tour routes, and using this time as a rehearsal opportunity.” She said for the live practices, some state parks staff who may not have gone on a tour before will provide an actual audience for rehearsals, before the general public is allowed to return.
Those run-throughs will be crucial for the timing and execution of revamped tour routes and the complex schedules that allow busloads of visitors to all be on tour in the Castle at the same time without having them bump into each other.
From Program Manager to Museum Director
The preparations haven’t been the only big things in the works at the Castle this winter: There’s also been a major leadership change.
To get the prestigious museum director’s post, O’Brien vaulted from being the Castle’s interpretive program manager to her new job in early November, Falat told The Tribune then.
(California State Parks photo)
She earned the unanimous vote of a four-person panel to give her the promotion, he said, and in the process edged out at least eight other well-qualified applicants from all over the country.
“It was a hard-fought competition for the job, but she earned it,” Falat said, “She did an outstanding job on her interview. She was very well prepared, with wonderful ideas and insights.”
He said O’Brien “spent a lot of time talking to staff and me and Hoyt Fields.” Fields is a previous longtime Castle curator and museum director, whom Falat said “is as much of an icon as the Castle is.”
What tipped the balance in O’Brien’s favor, Falat said, were her diverse state parks experience, her preparation for the job and that “she brings such a good balance.”
O’Brien started at state parks in November 1995 at the district that includes Malibu, Leo Carrillo and Point Mugu beach parks. The large district also includes the Antelope Valley Indian Museum and Adamson House in Malibu — “a phenomenal historic house museum with scrumptious tile,” O’Brien recalled.
She gives props and credit for her museum passions to “really great mentors in the curator field,” such as her bosses and friends at Will Rogers State Historic Park. She spent a year at Asilomar State Beach and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, which was O’Brien’s “introduction to the incredible talents and accomplishments of Julia Morgan.” Morgan was the groundbreaking, glass-ceiling-breaking architect and designer of Hearst Castle and about 7,000 other structures in California.
O’Brien joined the San Luis Obispo Coast District, which includes Hearst Castle, in early 2007.
“One of my first projects in the district was working with the California Rangeland Trust on interpretive panels about the Hearst Conservation Easement,” she said.
That work put a restrictive conservation easement over about 82,000 acres of ranchland and hills, she said. As part of that historic agreement, the Hearst family donated to the state most of a long strip of coastal land that stretches from San Simeon to San Carporforo at the Monterey County line.
“My job was to explain to the public that, because we’ve taken this land on, what that means and how special the land is,” O’Brien said.
She also worked with then state park district Superintendent Nick Franco and others on a statewide Junior Ranger Program, plus a self-guided activity book on the Castle.
“She seeks out growth, has a good vision for the Castle and already is a valuable member of our team,” Falat said. “She’s done an amazing job on our interpretive program. She’s helped to make it one of the top in the state.”
Those efforts during the pandemic included transitioning the public’s tour opportunities to social media. The move to museum director will be “good for Cara’s career development and for the Castle,” Falat added.
“She has really good ideas, a good understanding of what’s needed, and she’s willing to learn and grow and be that much better,” he said. “Her vision and ability to work with everybody, get the job done, and see longer down the field will serve her and us well.”
O’Brien describes her new job as a balance between “supporting the staff, bringing people together and planning our future projects while overseeing the care of the museum and its collections.”
“I’ll assess different pieces that need to be conserved and work consistently with conservators to keep the collection the way it was when William Randolph Hearst was here,” she said.
One of O’Brien’s joyous first tasks as museum director has been “redoing that booklet,” she said. “I’m so lucky that some of our staffers also are really great graphic artists.”
In fact, she credits her staff, Falat and her mentor, Fields, for giving her the confidence to take that giant leap upstairs into the California State Parks stratosphere, in the museum director’s office and job.
“I’m very grateful for all their support,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here without them.”
— Kathe Tanner is a reporter for the San Luis Obispo Tribune. This story is republished with permission.