For 60 years, San Diego’s Timken Museum of Artwork has stood in Balboa Park — a travertine-clad Modernist jewel field showcasing priceless Russian icons and masterworks from the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and Fragonard, floating among the many park’s exuberant Spanish Revival fantasies. However beneath its calm exterior lies an architectural thriller that has captivated Stephen Buck and Keith York, native structure lovers who’ve spent the final yr obsessively piecing collectively proof suggesting that the Timken’s true authorship has been misunderstood, if not intentionally obscured, for the reason that day it opened in 1965.
Their investigation — which has caught the eye of the soon-to-expand museum, to not point out the town’s tight-knit cultural neighborhood — started with a secret. In 2013, York, founding father of Fashionable San Diego, a digital archive dedicated to the area’s Midcentury design, obtained a name from certainly one of San Diego’s most revered architects, Robert Mosher. Then in his 90s, Mosher requested to fulfill for lunch in La Jolla. “I’ve one thing I must inform you,” he mentioned.
Mosher, recorded by York (who was sworn to secrecy till after Mosher’s dying in 2015) recounted a narrative advised to him many years earlier by his pal and colleague Richard Kelly, the lighting designer of a few of American modernism’s most iconic buildings, together with Philip Johnson’s Glass Home, Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Artwork Museum and Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Constructing. Kelly had been employed to design the lighting for the Timken. However in response to Mosher, throughout an early assembly Walter Ames, the challenge’s patron, made a shocking suggestion to Kelly: “You’re the architect — why don’t you design it your self?”
Kelly, who educated on the Yale College of Structure however had by no means designed a constructing, discovered himself out of his depth, Mosher added. He turned to his shut pal and frequent collaborator Johnson, who helped him sketch an idea that Kelly would refine right into a design Ames accredited. The plans have been handed off to San Diego’s Frank L. Hope & Associates to supply the working drawings.
When accomplished, the rigorously composed, traditionally impressed stone pavilion bore all of the hallmarks of Johnson and Kelly’s greater than half dozen collaborations. But when the Timken opened, solely Hope’s agency was credited. Considered one of Hope’s architects, John R. Mock, later took credit score because the chief of the design. This remained the accepted story till final December, when Buck, a medical analysis entrepreneur and structure buff, chanced on a long-ago publish by York about Mosher’s story. He couldn’t cease enthusiastic about it.
Architect Philip Johnson with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in entrance of New York’s Grand Central Terminal in 1977.
(Dave Pickoff / Related Press)
“Why would somebody like Robert Mosher, on the finish of his life, make this up?” Buck requested. “If he was telling the reality, this is without doubt one of the most vital uncredited works of Midcentury structure in California.”
Buck and York joined forces, combing by means of Kelly’s archives at Yale (with Yale scholar Macarena Fernandez Diaz) and thru the Timken’s personal recordsdata. Along with proof of copious correspondence between Ames, Kelly and Johnson, they discovered Kelly’s detailed architectural drawings of the museum, and a 1959 contract asking Kelly to arrange elevations, plans and different design-related paperwork. Hope’s agency, in response to a separate contract, would “put together working drawings.” Collectively the physique of proof appeared to substantiate a lot of Mosher’s story.
It additionally pointed to why Kelly (and probably Johnson) was neglected. In a single letter, Ames wrote that “because of native political cross currents, it was advisable that each one plans be filed regionally.” In different phrases, bringing in East Coast modernists like Kelly and Johnson risked a public outcry. “Ames wished the perfect design he might get,” Buck says. “However he additionally wished the museum constructed.”
The Timken positively feels acquainted to somebody who has visited a number of Johnson/Kelly collaborations: the bronze accents, the H-shaped pavilion, the glass partitions that can help you see straight by means of the constructing, and the pristine travertine — light-colored limestone that originated from the identical quarry in Tivoli, Italy, used for Johnson’s New York State Theater (renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008) at Lincoln Heart. All echo the minimalist precision and classical proportions of their museums throughout the nation. On the Timken, Kelly included downlighting to intensify the constructing’s travertine partitions, and engineered grids of soffits and louvers that wash the galleries in delicate, ethereal mild.
Keith York of Fashionable San Diego.
(Keith York)
“He was experimenting — making mild itself architectural,” says York. This was a trademark of Kelly’s, notes Dietrich Neumann, professor of the historical past of contemporary structure and urbanism at Brown College and writer of “The Construction of Mild: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Fashionable Structure.” “He emphasised supplies in a really skillful means. His lighting creates spatial depth. You get a special concept of what the structure consists of.” Neumann notes that Johnson preferred to exclaim: “Kelly is my guru. He’s the best lighting designer ever.”
Famous Buck: “There’s nothing in Frank Hope’s physique of labor that resembles this.” Hope’s agency is finest recognized for its designs of McGill Corridor at UC San Diego, the Union-Tribune Constructing in Mission Valley, and the all-concrete San Diego Stadium, later often called Qualcomm Stadium.
When Buck and York introduced their findings to the Timken’s management earlier this yr, the preliminary response was enthusiastic. However because the museum started its personal overview, the tone grew extra cautious. Trustees revisited Buck and York’s analysis and performed checks within the Timken’s archives. Government director Megan Pogue later summarized their place in a letter to the researchers:
Stephen Buck on the Timken Museum of Artwork.
(Stephen Buck)
“Based mostly on these findings, we reached the unlucky conclusion that Mr. Johnson was not finally concerned within the constructing’s design, though the particular architect or architects inside Frank Hope & Associates answerable for the ultimate design appear to stay unidentified. We proceed to welcome and encourage additional scholarly investigation into this query, notably provided that John Mock has lengthy been credited because the architect — an attribution he personally confirmed in recent times.”
When requested later why the museum didn’t affirm or deny Kelly’s connection, Pogue famous, “The whole lot in our recordsdata is that he was restricted to the lighting.” When pressed on the analysis unearthed at Yale, she acknowledged, “we have been so centered on Philip Johnson I don’t know that we did as deep a dive on this situation.”
“I can discover no cause why they wouldn’t wish to look by means of this analysis [at Yale] and are available to their very own conclusion,” responded Buck.
The inside of a gallery on the Timken Museum of Artwork in San Diego.
(Timken Museum of Artwork)
Behind the scenes, sensible issues loom. The Timken is getting ready to launch an underground growth designed by Gensler, which is able to double its sq. footage and supply much-needed new exhibition, workplace and studying areas. It’s a course of that has taken seven years to navigate by means of the town’s (and Balboa Park’s) public course of. The adjoining San Diego Museum of Artwork is about to embark by itself growth, changing Mosher’s west wing with a design by Norman Foster.
“Any new consideration, particularly concerning the constructing’s authorship, might reignite previous debates,” Pogue mentioned in an earlier interview. “We’re fascinated by this historical past, however we’ve got to watch out about the way it’s shared.” After consulting with the board, Pogue later famous that proof of a brand new architect, notably somebody of Johnson’s stature, “may very well be actually good for the museum.”
The museum’s nebulous, cautious positioning in some ways mirrors the politics that will have buried Kelly’s and Johnson’s involvement six many years in the past. Within the early Sixties, Ames confronted fierce opposition from civic teams, who decried modernism as a risk to Balboa Park’s Spanish coronary heart. To get his challenge accredited, he seems to have localized the credit score.
