At the Timken, a new exhibit looks at art through a modern lens

Left: Albert Bierstadt’s “Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall” (1864). Right: Kent Monkman’s “The Fourth World” (2012). (Bierstadt: Putnam Foundation and Timken Museum of Art. Monkman: Kent Monkman via Denver Art Museum)

By Michael James Rocha | [email protected] | The San Diego Union-Tribune

PUBLISHED: March 24, 2025 at 11:29 AM PDT

In the Curator’s Words is an occasional series that takes a critical look at current exhibitions through the eyes of curators.

Derrick R. Cartwright, director of curatorial affairs for the Timken Museum of Art, talks about the museum’s newest exhibition, “Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman,” on display through June 8. It revisits Albert Bierstadt’s 1864 oil-on-canvas painting “Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall” and looks at First Nation Canadian artist Kent Monkman’s 2012 work “The Fourth World.” Monkman’s acrylic-on-canvas painting is on loan from the Denver Art Museum, which next month will present the mid-career retrospective “Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors.”

Q: Talk about why it’s important for us to revisit classic pieces of art, like Bierstadt’s work, and look at it through the lens of modern art and artists.

A: The Timken has an extraordinary collection. Our museum’s paintings are ired by scholars throughout the world, and we often lend these objects to important exhibitions that put them into meaningful contexts elsewhere. For audiences in San Diego who know these works well, however, we are always searching for new ways to demonstrate these works’ enduring appeal. The “Reconsidering …” series was conceived to demonstrate how — and why — so many works that were painted centuries ago still matter — not just to artists but to museum visitors today.

“Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman” is the third iteration in that series. Previously, we’ve been privileged to share Rineke Dijkstra’s multi-channel video “Night Watching” alongside our painting by Rembrandt van Rijn, or Kehinde Wiley’s monumental equestrian portrait of Prince Tommaso of Savoy-Carignan next to our painting by Anthony van Dyck.

Those projects attracted new audiences to Balboa Park. The kinds of questions visitors ask and the pleasure they’ve taken in making new connections convince me that this is an altogether worthwhile endeavor.

The public’s engagement with such lastingly creative work is an unquestionably good thing. In a museum that is always free to all, we feel fortunate to study the best of the past and of the present, too.

Kent Monkman is a member of the Swampy Cree/Fisher River First Nation tribe. Given the fact that Timken’s permanent collection is rich in “old masters” but has no works by Indigenous artists, this temporary project provides a way to bring new, vital perspectives into the museum.

Q: As curator, what do you hope viewers can take away from seeing these works juxtaposed?

A: For visitors who may not know Kent Monkman’s practice already, this is an incredible opportunity to consider an artist at the top of his game in direct dialogue with one of the foremost American landscape painters of the 19th century, Albert Bierstadt. There’s nothing accidental about this encounter. Anyone who stands in the Timken’s American gallery will observe that these two paintings share quite a lot compositionally.

Monkman knows Bierstadt’s paintings of Yosemite even if they have totally different approaches to representing Indigenous populations in this landscape.

By titling his painting “Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall,” Bierstadt uses the site’s Ahwahneechee name. This might be understood as as an act of homage, a signal that Bierstadt fully understood he wasn’t the first person to experience a sense of wonder when beholding a sunrise in this spot.

Monkman replaces Bierstadt’s settler camp in the lower right foreground, however, with a herd of bison driven by horsemen. This substitution transforms the painting and disrupts Bierstadt’s narrative of a peaceful breakfast in the Yosemite Valley.

There are other differences between these works: Monkman’s painting is about twice the size of Bierstadt’s. He creates his paintings with the help of a bustling studio while the 19th-century artist worked alone from the many sketches he developed in nature.

There are some similarities, too: Monkman’s “The Fourth World” was purchased by top collectors Kent and Vicki Logan shortly after it was completed; the Logans then generously donated it to the Denver Art Museum. Bierstadt’s “Cho-looke, the Yosemite Fall” was acquired as a work of contemporary art by John Ingersoll Bowditch the same year it was painted. It descended through the Bowditch family until 1965, when it was sold and became the first American painting to be acquired by the Timken.

Seeing these works side by side will, hopefully, raise questions not just about the changing values of American artists but also the ways in which different audiences interpret well-known landscapes over time.