NEWS RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Margaret Noble: Drift
July 15, 2026 – September 6, 2026
The Timken Museum of Art is pleased to present Drift, a new exhibition by San Diego-based conceptual artist Margaret Noble. Created specifically for the Timken, the installation responds to François Boucher’s Lovers in a Park (1758) through an immersive animated work combining projected moving image, sound, and reverse glass painting techniques.
Using oil paint-on-glass animation, Noble transforms Boucher’s idyllic Rococo scene into a shifting landscape of movement and instability. Through projected light and original sound design, forms dissolve and evolve as figures, botanicals, shadows, and erosions emerge from the painting’s carefully composed setting. The work invites viewers to reconsider the visual language of eighteenth-century pastoral fantasy while reflecting on themes of memory, transformation, and perception.
“Using projected light and original sound design, liquid shadows and natural forms slowly slip out of the painting’s manicured Rococo setting,” Noble said. “Figures loosen, melt, and become unruly as they shift into animals, botanicals, and erosions.”
For Noble, the exhibition also represents a personal return to a museum that shaped her early experience with art. Growing up in San Diego in the 1980s, she regularly visited the Timken with her mother, painter Jill Hosmer, while accompanying her to the nearby San Diego Art Institute.
“I grew up visiting the Timken as a child in the 1980s,” Noble recalled. “The fact that it was always free made it feel like a place that truly belonged to everyone.”
“Margaret Noble’s residency reflects the Timken’s commitment to presenting art as a living, evolving experience,” said Megan Pogue, Executive Director of the Timken. “By inviting visitors into the creative process, we hope to spark curiosity, encourage dialogue, and deepen connections between artists and our community.”
Noble is the seventh local artist to be invited to participate in the Timken’s Summer-Artist-in-Residence series. Previous participants include Bhavna Mehta, Roman de Salvo, Marianela de la Hoz, Matt Rich, Tatiana Ortiz-Rubio, and Marisol Rendón. “Margaret ’s multi-media, interdisciplinary approach to the residency extends the streak of innovative projects we have seen to date,” according to Derrick R. Cartwright, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Timken. “We’ve asked each of these artists to spend time in the museum creating work that enters into dialogue with the Timken’s historic collections. The public gets to consider these works afresh.” A public conversation with the artist will take place in the galleries on July 13th, and occasions for visitors to create their own works, inspired by Noble’s example, represent other important components of this collaboration.
About the Artist
Margaret Noble is a conceptual artist whose installations combine sculpture, moving images, and sound in public spaces. The Timken invited her to serve as artist-in-residence during the summer of 2026.
Noble studied philosophy as an undergraduate at UC San Diego and later received her MFA in Sound Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While in graduate school, she worked as a disc jockey playing house music at underground clubs in Chicago and beyond. In 2007, Noble returned to San Diego to pursue careers as both an educator and exhibiting artist. She currently teaches at High Tech High, where she shares several awards with her 12th-grade art classes. Noble is also the author of Programming Media Art Using Processing: A Beginner’s Guide (2020).
Often embracing technology with skepticism, Noble’s socially engaged works have been featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the La Jolla Athenaeum, where her sculpture won first prize at the Athenaeum’s 23rd Annual Juried Exhibition in 2014.
Noble also creates site-specific public artworks. For the Port of San Diego, she produced Time Strata (2016), a sound installation at Cesar Chavez Park Pier. She was later commissioned to create The Moments Before (2022), a soundtrack installation for the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Berkeley Station. Many of Noble’s works involve subtle interventions in sensory expectations, encouraging heightened awareness of everyday surroundings.
Exhibition Credits
Margaret Noble: Drift is organized by the Timken Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of the Rembrandt Society and Friends of the Timken.
Exhibition Program
Curator Conversations: Drift
Monday, July 13, 2026 | 10:00am–11:00am
Join Director of Curatorial Affairs Derrick Cartwright, Ph.D., and conceptual artist Margaret Noble for a conversation exploring the Timken’s summer exhibition, Drift, on view July 15–September 6, 2026.
Drawing inspiration from François Boucher’s Lovers in a Park (1758), Noble reinterprets Rococo ideals by introducing motion and layered context through reverse glass animation, revealing and disrupting the painting’s serene, ornamental narrative. Guests will receive a preview of Noble’s installation before Drift opens to the public.
Tickets: $15 Non-Members / Free for Members
Learn More:
https://www.timkenmuseum.org/calendar/event/curator-conversations-drift/
Visitor Information
The Timken Museum of Art is located in the heart of Balboa Park, San Diego’s premier cultural destination. Admission is always free. For more information about the exhibition and related programs, visit www.timkenmuseum.org.
Timken Museum of Art
1500 El Prado
San Diego, CA 92101
Wednesday – Sunday, 10am to 5pm
Free Admission
619.239.5548
www.timkenmuseum.org