Timken Museum of Art

This guide to the Timken Museum of Art in San Diego centers on a canvas by the American marine painter Thomas Birch, who abandoned portraits around 1807 for a career spent painting ships in trouble. It follows his path from naval victories in the War of 1812 to the shipwrecks nobody liked to commission, and lands on one such scene, where a crew has already given up on the ship itself and is lowering a lifeboat into a bruised, swelling sea. Along the way you'll hear about the sisters, Anne and Amy Putnam, who quietly built this collection through a foundation so private that almost no one knew it existed. Stand close to the canvas and follow the rigging down toward the water.