{"id":403446,"date":"2025-11-25T11:08:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/403446\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T11:08:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:08:19","slug":"who-really-designed-this-san-diego-museum-an-architectural-whodunit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/403446\/","title":{"rendered":"Who really designed this San Diego museum? An architectural whodunit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For 60 years, San Diego\u2019s Timken Museum of Art has stood in Balboa Park \u2014 a travertine-clad Modernist jewel box showcasing priceless Russian icons and masterworks from the likes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Van Dyck and Fragonard, floating among the park\u2019s exuberant Spanish Revival fantasies. But beneath its calm exterior lies an architectural mystery that has captivated Stephen Buck and Keith York, local architecture lovers who have spent the last year obsessively piecing together evidence suggesting that the Timken\u2019s<\/a> true authorship has been misunderstood, if not deliberately obscured, since the day it opened in 1965.<\/p>\n

Their investigation \u2014 which has caught the attention of the soon-to-expand museum, not to mention the city\u2019s tight-knit cultural community \u2014 began with a secret. In 2013, York, founder of Modern San Diego, a digital archive devoted to the region\u2019s Midcentury design, received a call from one of San Diego\u2019s most respected architects, Robert Mosher<\/a>. Then in his 90s, Mosher asked to meet for lunch in La Jolla. \u201cI have something I need to tell you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Mosher, recorded by York (who was sworn to secrecy until after Mosher\u2019s death in 2015) recounted a story told to him decades earlier by his friend and colleague Richard Kelly, the lighting designer of some of American modernism\u2019s most iconic buildings, including Philip Johnson\u2019s<\/a> Glass House, Louis Kahn\u2019s Kimbell Art Museum and Mies van der Rohe\u2019s Seagram Building. Kelly had been hired to design the lighting for the Timken. But according to Mosher, during an early meeting Walter Ames, the project\u2019s patron, made a surprising suggestion to Kelly: \u201cYou\u2019re the architect \u2014 why don\u2019t you design it yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly, who trained at the Yale School of Architecture but had never designed a building, found himself out of his depth, Mosher added. He turned to his close friend and frequent collaborator Johnson, who helped him sketch a concept that Kelly would refine into a design Ames approved. The plans were handed off to San Diego\u2019s Frank L. Hope & Associates to produce the working drawings.<\/p>\n

When completed, the rigorously composed, historically inspired stone pavilion bore all the hallmarks of Johnson and Kelly\u2019s more than half dozen collaborations. Yet when the Timken opened, only Hope\u2019s firm was credited. One of Hope\u2019s architects, John R. Mock, later took credit as the leader of the design. This remained the accepted story until last December, when Buck, a medical research entrepreneur and architecture buff, stumbled on a long-ago post by York about Mosher\u2019s tale. He couldn\u2019t stop thinking about it.<\/p>\n

\"Architect <\/p>\n

Architect Philip Johnson with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in front of New York\u2019s Grand Central Terminal in 1977.<\/p>\n

(Dave Pickoff \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would someone like Robert Mosher, at the end of his life, make this up?\u201d Buck asked. \u201cIf he was telling the truth, this is one of the most important uncredited works of Midcentury architecture in California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buck and York joined forces, combing through Kelly\u2019s archives at Yale (with Yale student Macarena Fernanda Diaz) and through the Timken\u2019s own files. In addition to evidence of copious correspondence between Ames, Kelly and Johnson, they found Kelly\u2019s detailed architectural drawings of the museum, and a 1959 contract asking Kelly to prepare elevations, plans and other design-related documents. Hope\u2019s firm, according to a separate contract, would \u201cprepare working drawings.\u201d Together the body of evidence seemed to confirm much of Mosher\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

It also pointed to why Kelly (and potentially Johnson) was left out. In one letter, Ames wrote that \u201cdue to local political cross currents, it was advisable that all plans be filed locally.\u201d In other words, bringing in East Coast modernists like Kelly and Johnson risked a public outcry. \u201cAmes wanted the best design he could get,\u201d Buck says. \u201cBut he also wanted the museum built.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Timken definitely feels familiar to someone who has visited several Johnson\/Kelly collaborations: the bronze accents, the H-shaped pavilion, the glass walls that allow you to see straight through the building, and the pristine travertine \u2014 light-colored limestone that originated from the same quarry in Tivoli, Italy, used for Johnson\u2019s New York State Theater (renamed the David H. Koch Theater in 2008) at Lincoln Center. All echo the minimalist precision and classical proportions of their museums across the country. At the Timken, Kelly incorporated downlighting to accentuate the building\u2019s travertine walls, and engineered grids of soffits and louvers that wash the galleries in soft, ethereal light.<\/p>\n

\"Keith <\/p>\n

Keith York of Modern San Diego.<\/p>\n

(Keith York)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was experimenting \u2014 making light itself architectural,\u201d says York. This was a trademark of Kelly\u2019s, notes Dietrich Neumann, professor of the history of modern architecture and urbanism at Brown University and author of \u201cThe Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture.\u201d \u201cHe emphasized materials in a very skillful way. His lighting creates spatial depth. You get a different idea of what the architecture consists of.\u201d Neumann notes that Johnson liked to exclaim: \u201cKelly is my guru. He\u2019s the greatest lighting designer ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noted Buck: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in Frank Hope\u2019s body of work that resembles this.\u201d Hope\u2019s firm is best known for its designs of McGill Hall at UC San Diego, the Union-Tribune Building in Mission Valley, and the all-concrete San Diego Stadium, later known as Qualcomm Stadium.<\/p>\n

When Buck and York presented their findings to the Timken\u2019s leadership earlier this year, the initial response was enthusiastic. But as the museum began its own review, the tone grew more cautious. Trustees revisited Buck and York\u2019s research and conducted checks in the Timken\u2019s archives. Executive director Megan Pogue later summarized their position in a letter to the researchers:<\/p>\n

\"Stephen <\/p>\n

Stephen Buck at the Timken Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

(Stephen Buck)<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on these findings, we reached the unfortunate conclusion that Mr. Johnson was not ultimately involved in the building\u2019s design, although the specific architect or architects within Frank Hope & Associates responsible for the final design seem to remain unidentified. We continue to welcome and encourage further scholarly investigation into this question, particularly given that John Mock has long been credited as the architect \u2014 an attribution he personally confirmed in recent years.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked later why the museum didn\u2019t confirm or deny Kelly\u2019s connection, Pogue noted, \u201cEverything in our files is that he was limited to the lighting.\u201d When pressed on the research unearthed at Yale, she acknowledged, \u201cwe were so focused on Philip Johnson I don\u2019t know that we did as deep a dive on this issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can find no reason why they wouldn\u2019t want to look through this research [at Yale] and come to their own conclusion,\u201d responded Buck.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The interior of a gallery at the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego.<\/p>\n

(Timken Museum of Art)<\/p>\n

Behind the scenes, practical considerations loom. The Timken is preparing to launch an underground expansion designed by Gensler, which will double its square footage and provide much-needed new exhibition, office and learning spaces. It\u2019s a process that has taken seven years to navigate through the city\u2019s (and Balboa Park\u2019s) public process. The adjacent San Diego Museum of Art is about to embark on its own expansion, replacing Mosher\u2019s west wing with a design by Norman Foster.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny new attention, especially about the building\u2019s authorship, could reignite old debates,\u201d Pogue said in an earlier interview. \u201cWe\u2019re fascinated by this history, but we have to be careful about how it\u2019s shared.\u201d After consulting with the board, Pogue later noted that proof of a new architect, particularly someone of Johnson\u2019s stature, \u201ccould be really good for the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s nebulous, careful positioning in many ways mirrors the politics that may have buried Kelly\u2019s and Johnson\u2019s involvement six decades ago. In the early 1960s, Ames faced fierce opposition from civic groups, who decried modernism as a threat to Balboa Park\u2019s Spanish heart. To get his project approved, he appears to have localized the credit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For 60 years, San Diego\u2019s Timken Museum of Art has stood in Balboa Park \u2014 a travertine-clad Modernist…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":403447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,52529,8159,174148,1582,276,190746,190747,2609,48218,190743,71960,190742,3549,7264,190745,190744,190741,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-403446","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-architect","10":"tag-balboa-park","11":"tag-buck","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-california","14":"tag-design-ames","15":"tag-frank-l-hope","16":"tag-hope","17":"tag-johnson","18":"tag-keith-york","19":"tag-kelly","20":"tag-robert-mosher","21":"tag-san-diego","22":"tag-sandiego","23":"tag-seagram-building","24":"tag-soon-to-expand-museum","25":"tag-timken-museum","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-united-states-of-america","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","30":"tag-us","31":"tag-usa","32":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115610027563111501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}