Tag Archives: Balboa Park

Animated!

By | |
Comments Off on Animated!

San Diego Comic-Con Museum
Balboa Park, San Diego
February 3, 2023

Meredith went to a preview showing of the Comic-Con Museum’s new exhibit, The Animation Academy: From Pencils to Pixels. She enjoyed the exhibit immensely; it was both informative and fun. It spans the entire history of animation, explaining technological advances at each stage, including information about the creators and creative process, and offering numerous video loops. The 1914 short film Gertie the Dinosaur is playing at one of the first stations. It is amazingly well done from a technical standpoint and remains gently humorous a century later.


Meredith found the side-by-side Gumby labs fascinating. On the left are the tools for creating the modern stop motion animation. On the right is a work bench with tools and a video showing the original clay techniques.


There are hands on stations where museum visitors can draw and otherwise learn and create. Period merchandise is displayed also, such as Mickey Mouse watches and vintage cartoon lunch boxes.


There are many nuggets of information about the ideas behind favorite characters:

  • Two Hanna-Barbera characters were inspired by The Honeymooners: Yogi Bear drew on Art Carney’s Ed Norton, and Jackie Gleason’s character Ralph Kramden inspired Fred Flintstone.
  • Art Clokey’s wife Ruth suggested that he start with a gingerbread boy, as he was trying to find the right shape for a clay figure that could be easily reproduced and manipulated; that is how Gumby started.
  • Mark Twain’s description of a coyote he saw in the old West inspired Wile E. Coyote: “ A long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton… a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.”

There is a good deal more to the animation exhibit. We recommend it highly.

Meredith took time to see a few more small exhibits at the museum. On the upper level visitors can see cover art from 50 years of Comic-Con souvenir guides. Tucked away in a side room, also upstairs, are impressive Cardboard Superhero statutes made by teenage artists.

The Comic-Con Museum does not keep a permanent collection. Visit soon to see these exhibitions! The museum is closed Monday; open other days from 10 am to 5 pm.

Monet to Matisse

By | |
Comments Off on Monet to Matisse

Monet to Matisse
San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park, San Diego

May 29, 2022


We enjoyed the Monet to Matisse exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art with our friend Chris. Apologies for lagging so far behind in making this post! But the exhibition was recently extended and will run through October 10, 2022, so it is still possible to view it.


The museum describes the exhibition as follows:
See Impressionist masterpieces from some of the most significant names in European painting, including Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pablo Picasso, Alfred Sisley, and Pierre Bonnard.

Organized by the Bemberg Foundation, which is based at the historic Hôtel d’Assézat in Toulouse, France, the exhibition features more than 60 works produced from the 1870s to the 1930s. This is the first time this collection of works is on view in California, and SDMA is one of only two showcases in the United States.


Meredith was pleased to see a painting by Maurice de Vlaminck. Her grandmother’s second husband Herb was a distant cousin of Maurice, an established Impressionist painter.



Adult admission to the museum is $20, but youth under 18 are free. There are discounts for seniors, students, and military. For this exhibition there is an addition $5 charge. We have the Balboa Park Explorer pass, which is accepted at multiple museums, so we only needed to pay the exhibition fee. Parking is free in Balboa Park but is not close to the museum. Plan to walk or ride the park shuttle.
After our museum visit we ate at Panama 66, the open air restaurant next to the museum. We enjoyed it, as we have in the past. The food is good, they have craft beers on tap, and diners can stroll through the sculpture garden.


Timken Reopens!

By | |
Comments Off on Timken Reopens!

Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
San Diego
June 5, 2022

We are delighted to say that the Timken Museum in Balboa Park has reopened after more than two years. During its hiatus it has undergone a major refurbishment and systems upgrade. The Timken is probably our favorite museum, and it was delightful to get reacquainted with an old friend.


We attended a members’ preview on the first weekend in June; the museum reopened to the public on June 8. The San Diego Union Tribune did a pair of very thorough articles, a long piece about the reopening which covered the history of the museum and what’s new, and a second, shorter piece that highlighted ten “must see” works of art in the collection. We recommend those articles highly and will not try to repeat all that they covered.

Here are some highlights from our visit:
We enjoyed seeing the two new works on display as part of the permanent collection. The first is an 1874 marble bust Eve by American artist Thomas Ball.

The second is an 1890 oil painting Salome by American artist Ella Ferris Pell.

Hearty thanks to the donors who made those acquisitions possible! (Kevin and Irene Rowe, for Eve, and Sandra and Bram Dijkstra, for Salome.)
The gallery walls have been repainted, and the overall effect is to make the interior lighter and more pleasant. The collection has been rearranged in chronological order. The prior grouping was by category. The new system makes sense and is pleasing, and it did not take us too long to find our old friends. Every work of art now has an explanatory text on the wall to inform visitors. The bronze details have been refinished, inside and out, and this beautiful mid-century modern building really shines now. The air conditioning system has been completely revamped, an invisible but important upgrade.
Among our all-time favorite works in the collection are:
Eastman Johnson’s 1880 painting, The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket:

And the 1557 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Parable of the Sower:

Early in the pandemic lock down, Meredith ordered a mask from the museum store online with that Brueghel image, and she wore it for our recent visit.
The museum website has photos of all the works in their permanent collection, along with facts about each piece.
The gallery that houses special exhibitions was not open when we visited. There is a planned exhibition of works by summer artist-in-residence Marianela de la Hoz set to open July 10. Something to look forward to!
Things to know: The museum is open Wednesday – Sunday 10 am – 5 pm. Admission to the museum is free. Please make a donation! Parking in Balboa Park is also free, but located at a distance from the museum, so you will need to walk or take the park shuttle.

Bemberg Foundation Treasures

By | |
Comments Off on Bemberg Foundation Treasures

San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park, San Diego
September 5, 2021

We donned our masks and headed to the Museum of Art for our first conventional indoor museum visit in a year and a half.  We went to see the special exhibition “Cranach to Canaletto: Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation.”  The exhibition included more than 80 paintings belonging to the Bemberg Foundation collection in Toulouse, France.  Artists represented included, in addition to Cranach and Canaletto, Clouet, Boucher, Tintoretto, the younger Brueghel, and several others.  Their home is undergoing restoration, making it possible for the works to be sent on tour elsewhere.

We saw some impressive and beautiful works from the 16th through 18th centuries. They were gathered by type and subject matter, with portraits all shown together, interiors in another section, religious and mythological works together, and then landscapes and other exterior scenes in the final room.  Meredith particularly liked the portraits painted by Tintoretto.  We were both amused by Boucher’s putti (cherubs).  They were playing in their own paintings, apart from any larger scene, and looked as if they were taking a break from dancing attendance on God in some great theophany scene.

In the gallery just outside the Bemberg exhibition we looked at some contemporary paintings inspired by the pandemic.

The Bemberg exhibition has since closed. We are planning to go see the Renaissance to Realism exhibition currently on view which features secular paintings from the 17th century.

Great Caesar’s Ghost!

By | |
Comments Off on Great Caesar’s Ghost!

Comic-Con Museum
Balboa Park, San Diego
Opening (first phase) November 2021

We first learned about plans for the new Comic-Con Museum at the San Diego Comic-Con in 2018. There was a booth on the convention floor with general information, and a Q & A session we attended as well. The following year we attended a fundraiser in the museum building, with pop up exhibits and activities celebrating Batman.

The museum will be in the Federal Building, where the Hall of Champions was located for many years. The Comic-Con Museum has a 37-year lease on that building, which needs extensive renovations. When done there will be about 68,000 square feet available for the museum’s use.

Comic-Con announced this week that phase one of the construction will be finished in time for a November 2021 opening. The event will coincide with Comic-Con Special Edition, a reduced-sized fall version of the Comic-Con convention held each summer in San Diego.

The vision for the museum is that there will be both daytime exhibits, of the traditional museum sort, and nighttime programs. Exhibits will rotate every few months.  The building has very little storage space so there will be a limited permanent collection, and the museum will rely more on loaned items. There are two classroom spaces planned for educational activities.

The museum is being founded by San Diego Comic Convention, the non-profit organization that produces the annual popular arts and culture celebration Comic-Con. The founders want the museum to appeal to all ages. They want to balance nostalgia on the one hand, and current artists and trends on the other. The museum exhibits will also explain sequential art for those unfamiliar with it. More information can be found here.

Money of course is needed to complete the construction, and donations can be made at the Comic-Con website linked above.

Il Guercino

By | |
Comments Off on Il Guercino

Timken Museum
Balboa Park
November 24, 2019

Recently Meredith discovered the 17th century Italian painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri through a blog post featuring one of his paintings of the Annunciation.  The Angelus Project blog posts a new image of the Annunciation each week.  Barbieri is better known by his nickname “Il Guercino.”

She wanted to know more about Barbieri, and started with the Wikipedia article about him.  Apparently guercino is Italian for “squint-eyed.”  His Wikipedia entry has an image done by a contemporary artist, Ottavio Leoni, that shows Barbieri’s right eye crossing in, a form of strabismus (an umbrella term for several types of misalignment of the eyes).  Also intriguing was a link in that Wikipedia article to a medical journal article exploring whether Leonardo da Vinci may have had strabismus.  Other famous artists with various types of strabismus may include Rembrandt, Dürer, Degas, and Picasso.

We shared this information with our optometrist daughter, who told us that she had been discussing strabismic artists, particularly painters, with a colleague recently.  She was struck by the observation that paintings represent a 3D world in a 2D medium, and that translating three dimensions down to two may be easier for people who already see the world in two dimensions because of their strabismus.

Soon after that discussion we were visiting the Timken and discovered that there is a painting in their permanent collection by Barbieri, of the parable of the Prodigal Son.  In that parable, the father who welcomes back the errant son represents God forgiving sinners.  Luke 15:11-32.  A docent at the Timken explained to us that in addition to illustrating the original Gospel story, the painting also represents the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation, ready to welcome back Protestants.

Masterpiece Double Header

By | |
Comments Off on Masterpiece Double Header

University of San Diego
Timken Museum of Art
September 27 & 28, 2019

Meredith’s USD alumni magazine alerted us to a special art exhibition several months ago, and Meredith explored it this past weekend.

The University of San Diego and the Timken Museum have joined together, in partnership with the British Museum, to bring to town a selection of outstanding Italian prints and drawings owned by the British Museum, mainly from the Renaissance period.

Some can be seen at USD’s Hoehn Family Galleries, in Founders Hall on the university campus.  The exhibition there is entitled Christ: Life, Death and Resurrection. 

The rest can be seen at the Timken Museum in Balboa Park, in the special exhibition room.  It is entitled simply Masterpieces of Italian Drawings.

The rarest and most exciting piece on exhibit is Michelangelo’s drawing The Three Crosses. That piece can be seen at USD. It figures prominently in the publicity for the exhibition, for instance on the cover of the alumni magazine, but it is by no means the only masterpiece on display.

Admission to both museums is free.

Postcript: both exhibitions closed in December 2019, but USD posted an excellent video online, with curatorial fellow John Murphy conducting a virtual highlights tour of the USD portion of the project.  It runs 28 minutes and can be seen here.

Spain’s Golden Age

By | |
Comments Off on Spain’s Golden Age

San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park
May 19, 2019 and July 28, 2019

We went to see the San Diego Museum of Art’s new featured exhibition, Art & Empire: the Golden Age of Spain, on its opening weekend and then again more recently with a friend.  In between our two visits we went to Spain, where we saw other Golden Age paintings at the Prado Museum in Madrid.  It was fun to put the San Diego exhibition in the greater context.

The SDMA Golden Age exhibition features more than 100 art works, mostly paintings, from Spain’s imperial age.  The works include not only those by Spanish artists, but also many by contemporaneous colonial artists.  They are grouped thematically, with religious art making up a majority of the pieces on display, and many secular subjects shown as well.  The museum’s own Spanish art is gathered here, together with many borrowed pieces.

There were many great works, and we cannot name a favorite.  A very memorable piece was Velazquez’s Kitchen Maid with the Supper at Emmaus, which is interesting for its focus on the maid, with Jesus and the disciples in the background.  It is displayed near a more traditional treatment of that subject. 

We entered the museum for free as part of our annual Balboa Park Explorer Pass but paid $5 extra to get into the Art & Empire exhibit. It was well worth it!  Without the pass, museum admission is $15, $10 for seniors, and the exhibition is an extra $5. 

The exhibition runs through September 2.

After we were done at the museum on our first visit, we had fun riding the carousel over near the zoo. Meredith succeeded in grabbing the brass ring and won a second ride for free.

 

Stunning Landscapes

By | |
Comments Off on Stunning Landscapes

San Diego Natural History Museum
Balboa Park
May 19, 2019

On the spur of the moment, we went to see the 50 Greatest Landscapes exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, because we saw an article about it in the San Diego Union Tribune that morning.  Fifty of the best landscape photographs published in National Geographic magazine are displayed in the museum’s fourth floor gallery.  They are arranged by season.

All of the photos were striking.  Among the Winter photos, we particularly liked one that showed a dusting of snow in Monument Valley and another that showed the Norway sky lit up by the Northern Lights.  In the other sections we liked an interesting time lapse photo of firefly trails at night; autumn frost on trees in a Romanian forest; and chinstrap penguins on a blue iceberg near Candlemas Island in the remote southern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean.  The landscape photos will be on display through June 23; after the exhibit closes, a similar collection of National Geographic wildlife photos will open June 29.

Admission to the museum was included with our annual Balboa Park Explorer pass.  Regular adult admission to the museum is $19.95; there are discounts for seniors, children, students, and military.

Looking out from the fourth floor we could see a bird’s eye view of the giant fig tree next to the museum.  We remember years ago, when we could walk under the tree and climb on its roots and lower branches.  Now, for the protection of both tree and park visitor, there is a fence all the way around the it.

Art Sampler

By | |
Comments Off on Art Sampler

San Diego Museum of Art
Balboa Park
January 6, 2019

Our first museum trip of 2019 echoed our 2018 start. We used our Balboa Park Explorer passes to visit the San Diego Museum of Art. This time we concentrated our attention on two temporary exhibitions. The first showcased World War I propaganda posters; the second featured early 20th century prints that are not often displayed, due to light sensitivity.

We also spent some time in the permanent collection, viewing the gallery with European devotional art. El Greco is one of Meredith’s favorite artists, and his painting The Penitent St. Peter hangs at the entrance to that room. Further inside the room we got into a spirited discussion with a fellow enthusiast, comparing notes about the historic St. Nicholas, 4th century bishop of Myra, whose legend has evolved in odd ways to become the modern Santa Claus.