Museums

If a dispute isn’t about money, it’s usually about power. And that is what appears to be behind the problems at the Timken Museum of Art (below). Not programs, not old-school art versus contemporary art, not money.

When we last wrote about the Timken, we weren’t quite sure whether director John Wilson quit or was pushed out or why. It’s not quite true that the board disagreed with Wilson’s strategy, as several people including me surmised. Wilson has done a fine job. Attendance when he took over in 2008 was about 143,000. Last year, it was 197,000. Wilson added context to the collection of Old Masters, American paintings, and icons with exhibits: putting works by Gabriel Orozco in among the Russian icons because he used similar techniques; mounting the Robert Wilson Video Portraits show to illustrate that Wilson drew inspiration from Old Masters, to name two. But my sources say those shows did not ruffle the feathers of the board.

Even if they did, they drew audience. And Wilson’s best effort hasn’t yet happened: he has arranged for the Timken to borrow a Vermeer from the Rijksmuseum and a Raphael from the National Gallery in London for the Timken’s anniversary celebration next year. Not everyone can do that!

Meanwhile, the endowment, after losing value in the recession, is back to where it was, at about $25 million. Admission is free, but Wilson increased voluntary contributions — just by asking for them and putting a dollar amount at the contribution box (first $5, then $10) — to about $5,000 a month. For a museum with a budget about $2 million a year, that’s a noteworthy amount.

The problem was, Tim Zinn — who moved from trustee to president in 2012 — had other ideas. He wanted Wilson to continue his curatorial duties, but he also wanted to return to the Timken’s old governance structure, my sources say.

Walter Ames, who was the lawyer for the Putnam sisters, whose collection formed the Timken (they were kin to the Timkens), used to run the museum with “visiting directors.” They included, my sources say, Agnes Mongan and AB de Vries, t he retired director of the Mauritshuis. Thus Ames was able to run the museum himself. He passed that power to his daughter and grandson, Nancy Peterson and John Peterson (who I’m told never wanted the job and committed suicide).

Zinn, I’m told, likes that model. He is president, but not CEO, of Ceretec, “a privately held corporation developing and producing innovative, cutting-edge medical devices and pharmaceutical products.” Zinn wanted to make the decisions and, when Wilson wouldn’t go along, he made clear to Wilson that his contract, which was up in mid-August, would not be renewed. So Wilson quit as of July 1.

Zinn reached out to David Bull, 80, to become “visiting director” because Bull is on the Timken’s advisory board — another way the museum tapped curatorial help in the past without having its own.

But Bull, I’m told, has no intention of leaving New York and will in fact simply visit the museum on occasion. Wilson was a member of AAMD, but I doubt the Timken’s new arrangement qualifies for the AAMD’s museum standards rule that “The museum must be administered by a professional staff.”

This is no way to run a museum.

This Wednesday, John Wilson, Executive Director of the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego, is set to give a gallery talk titled “Brave New World: from Icons to the Future.” As I write this, that’s what the museum website says.

It may be a broken link by the time you read this post, though, because Wilson (pictured at right) quit or was pushed out last week, just before the holiday. His name has been removed from the Board/Staff page of the site, though his replacement’s name isn’t yet there. That would be, according to various reports, David Bull, the well-known conservator and expert on Old Master paintings. Bull is founder and president of the Fine Art Conservation & Restoration in New York and paintings conservator at the National Gallery of Art.

Bull, who is 80, has been named “visiting director,” which is new title to me. Wilson is 58. I’m not an ageist, but something is going on there.

The Timken is a small museum known for it collections of European old master paintings, American paintings, and Russian icons. Wilson has been director for six years, and was, according to the Times of San Diego, “the first professional art historian with extensive museum experience to hold the position.” 

Both sides have remained circumspect, but it looks to me as if the board disagreed with Wilson’s strategy for the museum. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune,

Wilson said he was hired to bring change to the museum. During his tenure, he brought in innovative exhibits that provided context for the Timken’s Old Masters collection, among them a cutting-edge Robert Wilson video portrait exhibit and the current installation “El Lissitzky: Futurist Portfolios.”

In the past year, attendance for the museum, which is the only free museum in Balboa Park, reached a record 200,000 visitors and fundraising also increased substantially. Among Wilson’s goals was to make the Timken a partner and a player in San Diego’s cultural community, and the museum, in collaboration with the San Diego Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Diego, was instrumental in the first ever cooperative effort between the three museums, “Behold America!”

But the U-T quotes Wilson saying: “The board had a model of the Timken that is similar to when John Petersen was here. So it’s time for a change.” And what was that?  The paper says that Peterson was the grandson of Walter Ames, the Timken’s founder, and the son of Ames’ daughter, Nancy Petersen, who was the museum’s first formal director. John Petersen ascended to director in 1996 but died in 2006. Wilson succeeded him. 

And the U-T notes: “Replacing a director, who is a first rate curator, with a visiting director, who is a first-rate conservator, speaks to the museum’s current priorities.”

The Times wrote:

…Paige Nordeen, a museum spokeswoman, [said:] “David will be guiding the institution through San Diego’s 2015 centennial celebrations in Balboa Park and coincides with the museum’s 50th anniversary celebration, and he will be leading several planning sessions over the next month.”

She also used the code word that Wilson was leaving “to pursue other opportunities,” even as the U-T has Wilson saying  “he had no immediate plans, and at least for now, is looking forward to working on some research projects, and will likely stay in San Diego.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Timken