TIMKEN MUSEUM OF ART
TIMKEN MUSEUM OF ART Affectionately known as San
Diego’s “jewel box” of fine
art, the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego’s historic
Balboa Park is home to
the Putnam Foundation’s significant collection of
European old masters, 19th century American art and Russian icons. The collection also includes the only Rembrandt painting on display in San Diego. Considered one of the finest small museums in the world, the Timken Museum of Art, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2015, provides visitors with an accessible and enriching cultural experience featuring a beautiful collection, intimate surroundings and perennially free admission.
Hours Tuesday – Thursday 10 am – 4:30 pm Saturday – Sunday 12:00 pm – 4:30 pm Closed Mondays & Major Holidays Want More Info? Call (619) 239-5548 Facebook: Timken Museum of Art Twitter: @TimkenMuseum Instagram & Pinterest: Timken Museum of Art
HISTORY “Each collection boasts unique and priceless representations of the specific genre.”
In an effort to secure the Putnam Foundation Collection for San Diego, Ames secured financial support from the Ohio-based Timken family of the Timken roller bearing fame to help build a new gallery for San Diego. The institution first opened its doors in October 1965. The institution was named the Timken Art Gallery (now the Timken Museum of Art) because of the very generous contributions the Timken family had made to the cultural life of San Diego. In the years between the Foundation’s establishment and the opening of the museum, the Putnam Foundation Collection paintings remained on loan to institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum. In 1965, the paintings were reunited, and hung in their new permanent quarters at the Timken. Located on the Prado in San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park, the museum displays more than 60 extraordinary artworks, predominantly paintings augmented by sculpture and decorative art objects. The works in the Putnam Foundation Collection are primarily in three distinct areas: European old master paintings, 18th and 19th-century American art, and Russian icons. Each collection boasts unique and priceless representations of the specific genre. Notable works in the collection include Rembrandt’s Saint Bartholomew (the only painting by the Dutch artist on public display in San Diego); Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Parable of the Sower; John Singleton Copley’s Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Gage; Eastman Johnson’s classic The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket; and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s View of Volterra. The Timken is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4:30 PM, and Sunday from noon to 4:30 PM. The museum is closed Monday. Admission is always free.
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ARCHITECTURE
The mid-century modern Timken Museum of Art today stands on a prime location in Balboa Park’s Plaza de Panama, the site of an important, but temporary, edifice for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition. That structure, the Home Economy Building designed by architect Carleton Winslow, was demolished in 1963. The Timken is arguably the second most important mid-century building in San Diego, after Louis Kahn’s iconic Salk Institute. The Timken is all the more significant for being designed by a local architect. The groundwork for the museum began in 1951. With the help of longtime friend and lawyer Walter Ames, the sisters Amy and Anne Putnam established the nonprofit Putnam Foundation, under which any art acquired became part of the Putnam Foundation Collection. After Ames secured financial support from the Timken family and its foundation, the firm of Frank L. Hope and Associates, the largest of its kind in the region, was hired to design and build a museum to display the collection in San Diego in perpetuity. While the Hope firm established a working team for the project, John Mock, Hope’s architect in charge of contemporary design, was responsible for the conception of the building. Mock attended several meetings with Walter Ames and Frank Hope Sr. and Jr. to discuss the main design feature – the ability to embrace Balboa Park from within the building. In contrast to other Balboa Park structures that focused on their own exhibits, the light and airy “see-through museum” took shape. The symmetry, balance and palette of materials (travertine, bronze and glass) set the stage for an experience unlike any other structure in Balboa Park. Standing next to a 19th century cast of Giambologna’s Mercury in the foyer (echoing a similar cast in the west building of Washington’s National Gallery of Art), visitors can enjoy the
lily pond to the east and the Plaza de Panama to the west as the sun rises and sets. Garden courts dissect the structure’s middle and blur lines between interior and exterior spaces and engage San Diego’s moderate climate and abundant sunshine. The firm hired internationally-acclaimed lighting designer Richard Kelly to design the museum’s interior and exterior lighting scheme. Kelly, who was favored by architects such as Kahn, Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, provided a unique skylight program for filtered sunlight to bathe the masterpieces in a way that was both considerate to the health of the art and consistent during the sun’s daily journey across the sky.During mid-summer there is often no need for artificial lights in the galleries. Hope’s design leader Howard Shaw provided the designs for the grill work and bronze fascia scheme on the exterior. He also embellished the entry in floral-themed bronze plates and continued the abstraction to the bronze railings, gates and grill-work that punctuates the light, airy feeling of the Timken’s glazed openings. The symmetry, balance and palette of materials (travertine, bronze and glass) set the stage for an experience unlike any other structure in Balboa Park. Standing next to a 19th century cast of Giambologna’s Mercury in the foyer (consciously echoing a similar cast in the west
building of Washington’s National Gallery of Art), visitors can enjoy the lily pond to the east and the Plaza de Panama to the west as the sun rises and sets. Garden courts dissect the structure’s middle and blur lines between interior and exterior spaces and engage San Diego’s moderate climate and abundant sunshine. The firm hired internationally-acclaimed lighting designer Richard Kelly to design the museum’s interior and exterior lighting scheme. Kelly, who was favored by architects such as Kahn, Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, provided a unique skylight program for filtered sunlight to bathe the masterpieces in a way that was both considerate to the health of the art and consistent during the sun’s daily journey across the sky.During mid-summer there is often no need for artificial lights in the galleries. Hope’s design leader Howard Shaw provided the designs for the grill work and bronze fascia scheme on the exterior. He also embellished the entry in floral-themed bronze plates and continued the abstraction to the bronze railings, gates and grill-work that punctuates the light, airy feeling of the Timken’s glazed openings.
of Balboa Park. The first is that it continues a trend of building structures of contemporary design in the park The dominant architectural style in 1915 was revival: on the East Coast Colonial Revival architecture reflected the nation’s 18th century origins; in the Midwest one sees Romanesque Revival; in San Diego it is natural to find Spanish Revival. Twenty years later there was a trend toward modernist designs and the buildings created for the 1935 Exposition, such as the Ford Building (now the San Diego Air and Space Museum) are art deco in form. So the creation of a midcentury modern, International Style, museum in 1965, especially in Southern California, should come as a logical progression. The second point is that the Timken was the most expensive building erected in San Diego up to that time. The benefactors were proud that not only was no expense spared, but that on completion it was given to the city for the benefit, pleasure and inspiration of the citizens of San Diego and visitors to the city. The building and its contents are available free to everyone.
According to experts, the Timken represents some of the best evidence of 1960s modernity by some of the best talent San Diego had to offer. It is a major example of a post-World War II trend to build contemporary museum buildings to display the art of the past, projects that include Kahn’s museums at Yale University (1953 & 1976) and the Kimbell in Fort Worth (1972), William Pereira’s 1966 Ahmanson Building at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Philip Johnson’s museums in Utica, New York (1960), Fort Worth (1961) and Lincoln, Neb. (1963). Today’s rose-colored wall upholstery is not original, installed in the early 1990s to enhance the colors of the paintings. When the Timken opened the walls were a color complimenting the travertine floors, with the intention that the neutral tonality of the interior would have disappeared and one’s eye only attracted to the rich colors of the paintings and the gold frames. Two other points should be remembered when considering the Timken building in the context
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OUR COLLECTION “The Timken’s collection spans nearly 600 years of art...”The world-class Putnam Foundation collection of European and American masterpieces is on permanent display at the Timken Museum of Art. The Timken’s collection spans nearly 600 years of art from early Italian Renaissance devotional paintings to late 19th century paintings from the U.S. and includes important examples of French, Dutch and Flemish paintings in addition to Italian and American. A special feature of the museum is the significant collection of Russian icons, many from the Moscow and Novgorad Schools, ranging from the 15th to the 19th century. Don’t miss San Diego’s only painting by Rembrandt, Saint Bartholomew; Jacques-Louis David’s revolutionary portrait of the Irishman Cooper Penrose; and a masterpiece by Eastman Johnson, The Cranberry Harvest. The foyer is adorned with Parisian 17th century tapestries illustrating the Stories of Queen Artemisia.
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AMERICAN Albert Bierstadt, 1830-1902 Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall, 1864 Oil on canvas, 87 x 68.9 cm (34-1/4 x 27-1/8 in.)
Martin Johnson Heade, 1819-1904 The Magnolia Blossom, 1888 Oil on canvas, 38.4 x 61.3 cm (15-1/8 x 24-1/8 in.)
DUTCH AND FLEMISH Pieter Bruegel the Elder, ca. 1525–1569, Flemish Parable of the Sower 1557, Oil on panel 73.7 x 102.9 cm (29 x 40-1/2 in.)
Petrus Christus unkown -1475/76 Flemish, Death of the Virgin, ca. 1460-65, Oil on oak panel, transferred to mahogany 73.7 x 102.9 cm (67-3/8 x 54-1/2 in.)
Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1669, Saint Bartholomew 1657, Oil on canvas 122.7 x 99.7 cm (48-3/8 x 39-1/4 in.)
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FRENCH
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1796-1875 View of Volterra, 1838 Oil on canvas, 32.2 x 24.4 cm (62-5/8 x 47 in.)
ITALIAN
Luca di Tommè, unknown-after 1390 The Trinity and the Crucifixion, with Scenes from the Life of Christ, ca. 1355, Tempera on panel, 56.9 x 54.4 cm (22-3/8 x 21-3/8 in.)
Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, 1467-1516 Portrait of a Youth Holding an Arrow, ca. 1500-10, Oil on wood panel, 49.7 x 35.4 cm (19-5/8 x 14 in.)
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, 1617-1682 Christ on the Cross, 1660-70 Oil on canvas, 208.9 x 113 cm (82-1/4 x 44-1/2 in.)
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FRENCH TAPESTRIES Four Entrefenetre Tapestries from the series Stories of Queen Artemisia Central designs by Antoine Caron (French, 1521-1599), France, ca. 1562-65
RUSSIAN ICONS
The Savior Enthroned 15th century, Novgorod School Tempera on wood panel 90.8 x 65.4 cm (35-3/4 x 25-3/4 in.) The Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ 16th century, Moscow School Tempera on wood panel 42.9 x 35.2 cm (32-1/8 x 26-3/4 in.)
The Royal Gates 15th century, Novgorod school Tempera on wood panel Left, 169.5 x 41.3 cm (66-3/4 x 16-1/4 in.) Right, 169.2 x 39.7 cm (66-5/8 x 15-5/8 in.)
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Timken Museum of Art 2250 Fifth Ave Suite 500 San Diego, California 92103 Phone: 619.239.5548 Fax: 619.531.9640 Reservations: 619.261.9236 Email: info@timkenmuseum.org
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