Tag Archives: Timken

Timken Reopens!

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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.

Il Guercino

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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

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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.

Family Holiday

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Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
December 28, 2018

We closed out 2018 with a trip to our favorite local museum, the Timken. It was a banner week for us because all three daughters, our son in law, and our new grandchild all visited together, overlapping by several days.

We first bought lunches from food trucks and ate out on the Plaza de Panama.

We then strolled through the Timken Museum lobby, looking at the hand made holiday decorations which were hanging both overhead and on the large tree at the back of the lobby.  They are an annually recurring exhibit, Jewels of the Season.

We next viewed the special exhibition of Rococo art.  (It closed a few days after our visit.)

We then dispersed to enjoy the permanent collection, particularly the Russian icons and San Diego’s only Rembrandt, “Saint Bartholomew.”  He is back in town after being loaned out to museums elsewhere.

The Timken offers free admission, so it is a great option for the thrifty or an easy add-on to other activities in Balboa Park.  Donations are welcomed and encouraged, however.

The next special exhibit at the Timken will be Metonymies: A Dialogue with 20th Century Works from the Sonnabend Collection, which runs from February 8 through April 28. We plan to visit again soon.

Earth Day in the Park

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Museum of Man
Timken Museum
Balboa Park, San Diego
April 22, 2018

We used our Explorer passes and visited Balboa Park. As part of the Explorer program we receive a monthly email bulletin telling us what is new in the park. We had picked out three things to see, but in the end saw just two of them.

We parked in Hillcrest and walked across the Laurel Street bridge, stopping in at the Museum of Man. We went there to see its new Post Secret exhibit. Post Secret is an ongoing project, created by artist Frank Warren. On his website new cards are posted weekly.

The museum website describes the exhibit, which displays a selection of cards submitted over the years:

Would you share your secrets with a stranger? Secrets are the currency of intimacy. They reflect our darkest thoughts, brightest hopes, and every emotion in between. They’re deeply personal, but extremely relatable. They allow us to feel alone, together. For over a decade, millions of people from all over the world have been anonymously sharing their secrets with Frank Warren, founder of the community art project, PostSecret. Each postcard submission is a unique work of art handmade by people who needed to share and release their secret into the world.

These submissions range from the trivial to the profound, sometimes funny and other times very sad. Some writers struggle with suicidal thoughts, and Warren worked for a time as a volunteer on a crisis hotline. The exhibit and his website both give links to suicide prevention resources.

It was Earth Day, so the park was hosting the annual fair. We saw many booths set up along the way we walked, from the Museum of Man to the Plaza de Panama. (And we understand there were other booths, scattered throughout the park.) There were many food tents set up on the plaza.

We tried to get in to the Museum of Art to see a new exhibition, but that museum was closed. We thought that was a little curious, thinking that Earth Day would been a good outreach opportunity for the museum. Stymied in that attempt and needing to kill some time before the Timken Museum opened at noon, we bought some pierogis and beignets from the food tents and sat by the koi pond to eat an early lunch.

The Timken Museum – possibly our favorite museum in the entire Southland – was hosting an exhibit entitled The Romantic Impulse in the American Landscape Tradition in its special exhibit space. (This exhibition runs through June 3, 2018.) There were about a dozen works, mostly oil paintings. They included Thomas Moran’s Opus 24, Rome from the Campagna and Albert Bierstadt’s Weser River, Minden Germany. We particularly like Bierstadt’s use of light in his painting. Nearby we saw William Keith’s painting In the Santa Cruz Mountains, a beautiful depiction of a waterfall. Most of the works displayed were from the 19th century, but there were several more recent works. We enjoyed the background music, a half hour loop “soundscape” of Romantic music, including Respighi’s Pines of Rome. Admission to the Timken is always free, and they have a very good permanent collection. Do be sure to drop a contribution into the box at the entrance, though.

After we were done we dropped by our favorite Hillcrest watering hole, the Brew Project, and enjoyed some tasty beers.

Japanese Friendship Garden

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Japanese Friendship Garden
October 29, 2017
December 29, 2017
Balboa Park, San Diego

The Japanese Friendship Garden is an oasis of beauty. We have often walked by its entrance, near the organ pavilion in the heart of Balboa Park, but had not been inside it for many years. We very much enjoyed our recent visits, the first on a quiet Sunday afternoon in October, the other just this past week.

The garden is located on a 12 acre plot within the park. It is a “friendship” garden because it symbolizes the bond between San Diego and its sister city Yokohama. The garden displays and celebrates Japanese culture, and uses Japanese gardening techniques with plantings suited to the San Diego climate.

In the upper garden we enjoyed the watercolor paintings displayed in the exhibit house, and we sat a while contemplating the dry stone garden. There is a koi pond in the upper garden, and we encountered more koi in the lower garden. They are large and splendidly colored animals!

The path meanders down into the canyon, from the upper to lower garden areas. Along the hillside we saw azaleas in bloom. There is a long water feature in the lower garden, which starts as a dry waterfall, then segues into flowing water, down to a pond around the Inamori Pavilion on the lower level. The garden is managed so that there are always some plants in bloom. We are looking forward to the cherry blossoms in the spring!

Some of the regular paths are a little steep, but there are alternate paths for wheelchair visitors.

Regular admission is $10; there are discounts for students, seniors, and military. Children under 6 are free. San Diego residents can get in free on the third Tuesday of each month.

There is an open air cafe outside the garden serving rice bowls, sushi, edamame, sandwiches, salads, and a variety of teas as well as other beverages. We ate there on our second visit and enjoyed our food. Since it is outside the garden, park visitors can eat there whether or not they are visiting the garden. Two of Bob’s former students saw him there, and they chatted while we waited in line to order.

Our second visit fell on the same day as the Cotton Bowl, and our middle daughter was in town, so we all put on our Buckeye regalia. In addition to the Japanese Friendship Garden, we visited the Timken and looked at the nativity scenes set up near the Organ Pavilion. (After the park visit, we headed to Mission Beach to hang out with other Buckeye fans and watch the game.)

Monet in Balboa Park

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Timken Museum
Botanical Building
Balboa Park, San Diego
October 8, 2017

We visited the Timken Museum of Art to see a special exhibition, Monet’s Étretat: Destination & Motif. The central items in the exhibit are two Monet paintings on loan from the Metropolitan Museum in New York: Étretat: The Manneporte (Étretat) and The Manneporte near Étretat, painted in 1883 and 1886, respectively. Both feature scenes at Étretat, on the coast of Normandy. There are two other paintings of Étretat on display in that gallery: The Cliffs at Étretat (1890) by William Henry Lipppincott and Sunset, Étretat (1892) by George Inness. The exhibition also includes photos and background materials about Étretat. The exhibition will run through December 31, 2017.

Étretat has a special place in our hearts. In 2000 we took three weeks off work and traveled in Europe with our three daughters, then ages 10-15. We had planned and saved for the trip for many years. As we planned it, we looked through the Michelin guidebook for France. Meredith was taken by a photo of the dramatic limestone cliffs at Étretat, so we added it to our itinerary. The scenery was beautiful and well worth the detour. Seeing the current Timken exhibit, which includes guidebooks from the 19th century and vintage stereoptican photos, we now know we were just part of a long line of tourists stopping there.

We love Monet — who doesn’t? — so when we heard about this exhibit, we figured it was a must-see for us. The Timken is a small museum, and the exhibition takes up just one small gallery, their special exhibition space. But this is the sort of thing the Timken does well — specific focus, quality not quantity.

As we have said before, the Timken is possibly our favorite museum. It is free, for starters. (Do drop a donation in the collection box, though!) The collection is good, and it is a pocket size art museum which is easy to see in a short time. Handicap access is good. Parking is free in the park, but allow for a bit of a walk, or take the parking tram, especially on a weekend.

On our way to the Timken, we stopped to listen to a bagpipe band near the House of Scotland. We took a walk around the center of Balboa Park afterwards, stopping in the Botanical Building by the lily pond (also free).

The San Diego Museum of Art also has a special Monet exhibition Reflections on Monet on display currently, which runs through January 21, 2018. We have not seen it yet, but hope to do so. It features a special viewing of Monet’s 1904 painting Le Bassin de Nympheas.

Timken New Year’s Eve

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Timken Museum of Art
Balboa Park
December 31, 2016

We love the Timken Museum of Art; as we have said before, it is perhaps our favorite museum. It is a small museum located in the heart of Balboa Park, next to the (larger and unaffiliated) San Diego Museum of Art and the arboretum. Admission is free, although donations are encouraged.

We went there on New Year’s Eve to catch the last day of the exhibition Jewels of the Season, displaying many wonderful hand made ornaments created by local artists Florence Hord and Elizabeth Schlappi. Bob had gone to see it a week earlier with our middle daughter and son-in-law; this was Meredith’s first visit. Annually since 1988, the Timken has set up a Christmas Tree and displayed on it a selection of ornaments from the collection, which totals over 2000 pieces. Starting last year, the exhibition was expanded and is now an extended installation with more ornaments hung overhead and displayed in cases, in addition to those shown on the tree.

We browsed through the permanent collection as well. The museum is small, but for its size offers an excellent assortment of European and American paintings. It boasts the only Rembrandt painting in San Diego, Saint Bartholomew.

December 31 marked the last day of the Jewels exhibition; be sure to see it next holiday season! The Timken has another special exhibition coming up: Witness to War: Callot, Goya, Bellows, which will run from January 27 – May 28, 2017. We are also looking forward to the fall, when the Timken, in collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will bring a small group of Monet paintings to San Diego. Details of that exhibition have not yet been released.

On our walk through the park, we stopped to enjoy the Nativity and related scenes displayed near the organ pavilion. According to the Union Tribune, the original sculptures were done over 70 years ago by noted Los Angeles artist Rudolph Vargas. They have been displayed at the park each Christmas season since 1953. In recent years they had become worn and tattered. Over the past year, local artist Barbara Jacobson donated her time, and together with numerous lay volunteers refurbished the entire set. The figures and backdrops look spiffy now, thanks to their efforts.

Assorted Updates

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Over the last month or two we have seen more than the usual number of items in the press that tie into places we have visited recently. Here is a sampling:

La Brea Tarpits History. The Los Angeles Times ran a retrospective article, A mammoth move to the tar pits, on November 1, 2015 (November 2 print edition), pulling from coverage they did in 1967 explaining the history of the outdoor mammoth sculptures in and around the large tar lake in Hancock Park. The article included several striking photos of the sculptures being transported and put in place. The famous fiberglass mammoths at the La Brea tar pits have kept watch over Wilshire Boulevard for five decades. But few who gaze at the tourist attraction know how the prehistoric “creatures” got there. It turns out the first one got a lift from a 1958 Volkswagen.

Urban Planners Give Olvera Street a Shout Out. Also in the Los Angeles Times, we saw an article reporting on Olvera Street’s grand honor, namely national recognition as a “great street,” based on architectural features, accessibility, functionality, and community involvement. Downtown’s historic Olvera Street, one of the oldest streets in Los Angeles, was named this week as one of the country’s top five “Great Streets” by the American Planning Assn. The brick pedestrian street “is a place where visitors can get a taste of Mexican culture and a sense of the history that still stands preserved in the buildings and plazas that surround the street,” the association said in its designation.

Everybody Loves Vermeer. The Vermeer painting we loved so much when we saw it at the Timken Museum in San Diego — Woman in Blue Reading a Letter — has moved on, this time to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, where it will be on display just until December 1. NPR ran this story about the exhibition.

Timken Acquires New Art. Not content to rest on its laurels after the Vermeer and Raphael special exhibitions, the Timken Museum has purchased a painting, Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco Zurbaran. The San Diego Union Tribune reported on the acquisition in an article in its October 30, 2015 online edition (November 1 print): The Timken Museum of Art has purchased Zurbarán’s 1635 masterpiece “Saint Francis in Meditation,” the first acquisition in a decade for the 50-year-old Balboa Park institution and the second Zurbarán acquired by a San Diego museum this year.

Hammer Museum Acquires More Room to Spread Out. Just after we had been on our most recent visit to the Hammer Museum in Westwood, we saw an article in the Los Angeles Times, More space, more room for art, which appeared online October 26, 2015 (October 27 in the print edition). The Hammer Museum at UCLA is expanding its footprint in Westwood, taking over five floors of the Occidental Petroleum office tower that will give the contemporary art institution more than 30% additional exhibition and administrative space. Until recently, the Hammer had leased its space from Occidental. Officials at the Hammer and UCLA said Monday that the expansion is part of a recent real estate deal in which the university has become the Hammer’s new landlord. UCLA said it has acquired a full city block of property from Occidental that includes the office tower and the museum building, both of which had belonged to the oil company. The acquisition also includes the 634-space underground parking garage.

Timken — Vermeer

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Timken Museum
Balboa Park
San Diego
September 5, 2015

We went back to one of our favorite museums, the Timken Museum in the heart of Balboa Park, near the arboretum and koi pond. We recommend this museum highly, and suggest anyone living in San Diego who has not been there should check it out. It is a totally FREE, small (right sized) art museum with an excellent collection of American and Western European paintings and a large collection of Russian icons. Although admission is free, we made sure to drop some cash in the donation box at the entrance, and we encourage others to do likewise.

Timken_Vermeer

Our most recent visit, back in May, had been to see a special exhibition of a Raphael painting that was on loan at the time. We went this time to catch a visiting Vermeer painting, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, on its final week here in San Diego. We arrived a little before the museum opened at 10:00 a.m. and joined a group of patrons waiting for the doors to open. Among that group was a man who had come all the way from Washington State to see the painting. He told us the painting is the 15th Vermeer he has seen; an impressive life list! We were enthralled by the painting, particularly by the use of light and color, and also the subtle details. It is a momentary glimpse into the life of its subject. She is caught in the drama of the moment, reading the letter, perhaps sent by her husband traveling far away. Other pieces of Dutch art from that era, including some outstanding watercolor paintings of tulips, were displayed in the same room, giving a context to the central piece.

The museum website had this information about the painting, which was on display through September 11, 2015:
The “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” one of about 36 known paintings by world-class master artist Johannes Vermeer….Luminous and exquisitely rendered, “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” (about 1663-1664) is one of Vermeer’s most captivating portrayals of a young woman’s private world. This generous loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam marks the first appearance of this remarkable painting in San Diego. Praised as one of Vermeer’s most beautiful paintings, “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” demonstrates the artist’s exceptional command of color, light and perspective.

Meredith put a heads up email out to her rowing team, to let them know that week was the last chance to see the painting. Several of them made a point of going to see it that final week, one for the second time. A teammate commented: “Vermeer is one of my favorites. His use of optics, exaggerated perspective and special pigments are fascinating.” Another was pleased that the exhibit tied into a lecture series she had attended recently, about Dutch art.

While it is no longer possible to see the Vermeer, the Timken’s Rembrandt, St. Bartholomew, is back in its place of honor and well worth a visit.