The Timken Museum of Art unveils Poetic Portraits: Allegory and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, a landmark exhibition exploring the rich interplay of art, literature, and identity during the Renaissance. This exhibition brings together more than a dozen exceptional images that trace the impact of sixteenth-century art on ideas about portraiture. At the heart of the Poetic Portraits is a masterwork by Sofonisba Anguissola, one of the most celebrated women artists of the Renaissance. Her Portrait of Giovanni Battista Caselli, on loan from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, anchors the exhibition and is shown in the United States for the first time at the Timken.

The sixth featured artist in the Timken Museum of Art’s ongoing Summer Artist-in-Residence Program is Marisol Rendón. Rendón was born in Manizales, Colombia but is well known to San Diego’s arts community through her many public artworks and service as a popular professor at Southwestern College. In 2024, she was a recipient of the San Diego Arts Prize. Her residency at the Timken was inspired by her deep admiration for the Renaissance religious imagery and by the Russian devotional icons she has studied in the galleries. Specifically, she has been inspired by these works’ integration of elaborately gilded halos and decorative backgrounds which parallel, in surprising ways, the intricate goldwork of indigenous artisans in Colombia. Rendón alludes to this universal attraction by calling her project for the Timken Tapando el Sol con un Dedo (Covering the Sun with One Finger). Visitors are invited to watch the artist create works in the museum’s Central Gallery during her residency.

Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman juxtaposes Albert Bierstadt's 1864 painting Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall with contemporary First Nation Cree artist Kent Monkman's 2012 work The Fourth World, encouraging viewers to reconsider historical representations of Indigenous lands and peoples. As part of the Timken Museum's ongoing "Reconsidering..." series, Monkman’s large acrylic on canvas painting will be displayed alongside Bierstadt’s work in the American Gallery, marking the first public display of Monkman’s art in San Diego.

Modeling for the Masses: Sculptural Ideals in 19th-Century America explores the popularity of three-dimensional art during a time of rapid political, technological and aesthetic change. Marble works by Hiram Powers, Thomas Ball, Chauncey B. Ives, as well as plaster casts by John Rogers, found their way in homes throughout the United States. These idealized carvings carried complex messages, not least of which were connotations of cultural prestige and social privilege. This exhibition considers both the iconography of this creative practice and the mechanisms--such as advertising and photography--by which it spread to consumers.

The Timken’s fifth artist-in-residence, Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio will create her monumental drawings exploring memory and the blues of atmospheric perspective in June, culminating in a site-specific installation on view July 19 – September 29.

In partnership with the Balboa Art Conservation Center, we invite you to witness François Boucher's Lovers in a Park under full conservation, publicly examined, cleaned, and preserved with the intent to demystify modern museum practices.