A PHOTO FINISH? With museum inventory complete, Tony Mennillo says city ‘strong-armed' him in photo fight

After thousands of images at the Destin History and Fishing Museum were inspected, sorted and catalogued, Tony Mennillo finally has an inventory of his father’s photo collection. But he says its falls short.

“They didn’t do to well, but they made a good effort,” he told The Log Monday.

Mennillo, who’s father Arturo Mennillo owned Arturo’s Studio, approached the city last year asking for the inventory, claiming that he had a contract with the city that guided the use of his property. He said the Destin History and Fishing Museum violated the contract, which he entered into with former library director Dooney Tickner in 1999, by lending out and reproducing historic photos of the area.

To read a profile of Arturo Mennillo, click here.

City Manager Greg Kisela told The Log Friday that graduate students from the University of West Florida worked their way through about 8,000 images from the museum, whether they were on the walls, in a filing cabinet or anywhere else.

“Those poor girls probably lost a decade off their eye sight,” he said. “We have provided him (Mennillo) with everything they found to be Arturo’s.”

The 120 images the city provided Mennillo on a computer disk are a far cry from the 380 images he said should be in the city’s possession. Clearly frustrated, Mennillo told The Log that his collection should have grown over the years, not decreased.

“If we are going to go in there and try to do it, we need to do it right,” he said of the inventory. “Let’s not just go in there and pretend like we did it.”

As part of the agreement that was made with the city, Mennillo said he thought he would have the opportunity to verify the student’s findings.

But that’s not the case.

As of Friday, Kisela said the city had “completed” its part of the agreement by performing the inventory. He added that if Mennillo had any concerns moving forward he could contact the museum’s attorney Matt Burns.

That doesn’t sit well with Mennillo.

“I get the feeling they are just trying to shut me out,” he said. “They have excluded me from the whole process …. I am just the little guy and they have strong-armed me the entire process.”

With costly attorney fees stacking up, Mennillo said that he just wants the whole ordeal to come to an end and for everyone to get a little piece of what they want.

For Mennillo, that equates to the city and the museum managing his collections properly and abiding by the agreement they made, saying the city needs to “just fess up” and acknowledge that an agreement is in place and they were wrong.

“How hard is that?” he said.

For her part, museum director Jean Melvin said she hasn’t heard anything in regard to the inventory since the graduate students completed their work.

“I think Tony’s request was to have an inventory done and that’s what has been done.”

When The Log asked Mennillo what the next step was, he said that he wasn’t quite sure.

“I wrote a letter to the city to see where we go from here,” he said. “I’m really upset; the whole situation is just weird. It could all turn out, but you never know.”