When writing about the Timken’s history, it’s practically obligatory to invoke the support of the Putnam sisters--Amy, Anne, and Irene. Less frequently, and usually in passing, I’ve had occasion to mention members of the Ames family, who played another critical role in the creation of this museum. Walter Irving Ames (1894-1980) was the Putnams’ trusted attorney, after all. He orchestrated the sisters’ estate planning in ways that have ensured the long-term health and sustainability of the Timken, even during trying times. Ames was part of the San Diego law firm --Gray, Cary, Ames & Driscoll (later, until 1993, Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye)--which he helped found in 1927. For decades, Ames lived on Hillside Drive in La Jolla, together with wife Marguerite and his children, Nancy and Bob. Highly respected in San Diego business circles, he was sometimes identified as a member of the “Broadway Barons”--a group of downtown leaders that included the likes of Roscoe Hazard and Walter Trepte.  At the time of Amy Putnam’s death, in 1958, Ames stepped in to become the President of the Putnam Foundation, the legal entity tasked with purchasing important works of art for a future “gallery” in Balboa Park. Though Ames never pretended to be anything other than a lawyer, he capably negotiated the acquisition of numerous paintings for the museum while simultaneously overseeing construction of the modernist structure that opened to the public as the Timken Gallery of Art, in 1965. Next, he dedicated himself to leading the gallery, serving as its first Director, until 1977, when Nancy Ames Petersen, his daughter, succeeded him in that role. Fellow-board members so appreciated Ames’s dedicated service that they commissioned a commemorative portrait shortly after his passing.

The decision to select Ruth Hayward (b. 1934) as the artist responsible for that lasting tribute may seem like a foregone conclusion. Hayward created the larger-than-life bronze statues of Kate Sessions, Alonzo Horton, and George Marston that greet most visitors to Balboa Park on either side of the Fifth Avenue entrance. She also created likenesses of philanthropists, such as Ellen Browning Scripps, the opera conductor, Karen Keltner, entrepreneur, Dr. Terry Straeter, and the comedian, Lily Tomlin, for prominent public displays. Hayward, a native San Diegan who is now 86, is also a noted nature photographer. Despite her status as a go-to sculptor for the civic leaders, Hayward came to that profession late in her career. Her early background was not in the arts. Hayward trained as a mathematician and worked as an engineer at General Dynamics for four decades before retirement provided her with the opportunity to pursue a second career as a sculptor. Hayward studied with the Leucadia-based artist, T. J. Dixon (?-2018) who with her husband, James Nelson, specialized in similarly realist monuments of noteworthy Californians. The likeness she produced of Walter Ames has stood for more than 3 decades on a pedestal near the entrance to the Timken Museum of Art.  

For many years Hayward’s bust was the only permanently, if inconspicuously, displayed work by a woman artist in the building. That is about to change. Stay tuned.