Norton Simon Museum

Norton Simon (1907-1993) was a Los Angeles industrialist who built substantial fortunes through Hunt Foods and various other consumer-product businesses, then turned increasingly toward art collecting beginning in the 1950s as his business empire stabilized. Simon's collecting was distinguished by both the depth of his financial resources (allowing him to compete for top-tier paintings and sculptures at major auctions and through private dealer transactions) and by his substantive personal engagement with art-historical scholarship — Simon worked closely with leading curators, art historians, and dealers to build a collection of substantive scholarly significance rather than just decorative or status-driven accumulation.

The collection grew through both individual major acquisitions and through Simon's acquisition of entire other collections — most notably his 1971 acquisition of much of the Duveen Brothers gallery inventory and other major collection transitions that brought substantial groups of related works into the Simon holdings in single transactions. By the mid-1970s the collection had grown to museum-scale proportions requiring substantial permanent display infrastructure rather than just storage and rotating private exhibition.

The Norton Simon Foundation took over the financially-troubled Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in 1974, renaming it the Norton Simon Museum and transforming its programming from a modern-art-focused institution into the comprehensive European-and-Asian art museum that the Simon collection required. The major renovation of the museum building completed in 1999 (designed by Frank Gehry) substantially improved the gallery layout, environmental controls, and visitor circulation while preserving the essential modernist museum architecture that had defined the building since its original 1969 construction.

The Renaissance and Baroque European holdings include major works by Raphael, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, Andrea del Sarto, Tintoretto, Veronese, Caravaggio (attributed), Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and substantially every other major name in the European painting tradition from the 14th through 17th centuries. The Rembrandt holdings are particularly substantial — multiple major portraits including 'Portrait of a Boy' and 'Self-Portrait, Aged 51,' representing one of the more substantial private-collection Rembrandt groupings in the United States.

The French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings are the collection's defining strength. Major works include Van Gogh's 'Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier)' from 1888, multiple major Monet landscapes including 'Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur' (1865) and various other landscape paintings, substantial Manet portraits, Degas's iconic 'Little Dancer of Fourteen Years' sculpture plus the substantial separate Degas modello bronze series that the museum holds in particularly complete form, Cezanne still lifes and portraits, Renoir figure paintings, Pissarro and Sisley landscapes, and substantially every other major name from the Impressionist circle. The depth and quality of the Impressionist holdings substantially exceeds what visitors might expect from a private-collector museum and approaches the level of major metropolitan museum collections.

20th-century modern art holdings include major Picasso works spanning his Blue Period through his late career, substantial Matisse paintings and bronze sculptures, Modigliani portraits, Klee abstractions, and various other major modernist figures. The 20th-century holdings extend the chronological coverage from the Renaissance roots through to the mid-20th century, providing visitors with substantially complete European art-historical narrative across nearly seven centuries within a single museum visit.

The South and Southeast Asian sculpture collection is the museum's other major strength — a substantial collection of Indian, Tibetan, Nepalese, Cambodian, Thai, and other Asian Buddhist and Hindu sculpture spanning roughly the 9th through 17th centuries. The collection includes major bronze and stone sculptures of Hindu deities (Shiva, Vishnu, Parvati, Ganesha, and various other figures), Buddhist sculpture including substantial Buddha and bodhisattva representations from various Asian traditions, and substantial groupings of related works that provide context for understanding broader Asian sculptural traditions.

The collection was developed substantially in parallel with the European holdings through the 1970s and 1980s, reflecting Simon's substantive engagement with both Western and Asian art traditions. The display galleries for the Asian sculpture provide substantial contemplative space and lighting designed to highlight the sculptural qualities of the bronze and stone works. For visitors unfamiliar with South Asian art traditions, the collection provides one of the most substantial introductions available in the United States — particularly notable for being assembled by a private collector rather than through the institutional ethnographic-collecting that defined most American museum Asian holdings.

The sculpture garden surrounding the main museum building features major outdoor sculpture including substantial Rodin bronzes (multiple major works including 'The Burghers of Calais' study figures), Henry Moore monumental abstractions, Aristide Maillol classical figure studies, Barbara Hepworth abstract carvings, and various other major 19th and 20th century sculpture. The garden's landscape design — reflecting pools, walking paths, mature plantings — provides the kind of substantial outdoor contemplative space that distinguishes the Norton Simon visitor experience from purely-indoor museum visits. The combination of the world-class indoor collection plus the substantial sculpture garden produces one of the most complete art museum experiences available in Southern California.