Quote of the Day: Dana Gioia

Timken Museum of Art, San Diego

"There’s this ugly, modernist building, a tiny, awful little thing, and this awful little moat, that is a blemish on the entire park. It’s the Timken Gallery, which is only six rooms, and every room is full of fantastic paintings." 

—Dana Gioia, on Conversations with Tyler [Cowan] podcast

Add California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia to the list of those who love the Timken Museum's art and hate its building. The travertine, bronze, and glass structure is by San Diego architect John R. Mock (1934-2024). Ongoing attempts to frame the Timken as an landmark of Mid-Century Modern have had limited success. Mock's death this Feb. 5 drew relatively little attention.

Mock's brand of modernism had a Hollywood Regency vibe some read as kitsch. The Timken website connects Mock to "a post-World War II trend to build contemporary museum buildings to display the art of the past," invoking Louis Kahn’s revered Kimbell Museum and William Pereira’s less admired and already demolished LACMA (which also had a "moat").

Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, Torment of St. Anthony,  about 1515-20. Timken Museum of Art.

As to the fantastic paintings, Gioia told podcaster Tyler Cowan "there's a Bosch!" In fact the Timken does not have a painting by that rare Netherlandish master. In the San Diego Reader, Matthew Lickona theorizes that Gioia was referring to an unusual Temptation of St. Anthony by Italian artist Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo. Anthony flees from a hellscape that must have been inspired by Hieronymus Bosch paintings that Savoldo saw in Venice. 

San Diego's discerning Putnam sisters, Amy and Anne, bought an Arrest of Christ that they believed to be by Bosch. They donated it to the San Diego Museum of Art before they had a mysterious falling-out with its director, Reginald Poland. The rift ultimately led to the establishment of the next-door Timken Museum of Art to house the part of their collection not donated to SDMA. (It's named for the local family of ball bearing magnates who funded the building.)

At its 1965 opening, the Timken did not have enough art to fill even its six small rooms. SDMA lent many Putnam Old Masters to the Timken, including the supposed Bosch. Thus a Bosch of sorts has hung at the Timken. It is now assigned to his workshop. 

Workshop of Hieronymus Bosch, The Arrest of Christ, about 1515. San Diego Museum of Art