There was one Picasso painting, however, that I actually tolerated. The colors seem to pop off the wall.Īfter looking at some more Monet’s, Manet’s and other masters whose names do not begin with “M”, we headed back across the museum to look at some of the modern art, most of which, frankly, we can’t stand. Walking into a side room, I saw a painting that had captivated me on my last visit here, Georges Lacombe’s Autumn: The Chestnut Gatherers. The former was Renoir’s “only studio group portrait,” and “the bald, bearded man partially hidden to the right is painter Camille Pissarro.” Stepping into the next room, Pierre-Auguste Renoir had a couple of paintings that stood out…At Renoir’s Home, rue St-Georges and The Pont des Arts, Paris. We also liked Mouth Of The Seine, Honfleur, because we had visited Honfleur last October. The next picture to catch our eyes was one by Claude Monet, The Artist’s Garden At Vetheuil. We arrived at the museum right as it opened at noon, so that way I wouldn’t be taking photos in front of disgruntled patrons (those art aficionados can get rather testy at times). In the first room we came upon a couple of works from Vincent Van Gogh, Portrait Of A Peasant and The Mulberry Tree. We bought our tickets, picked up the audio guide (Tom Brokaw gives the introduction to the audio tour), and it was now time to explore the museum. After parking, we were greeted by Auguste Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. Today, more than 12,000 objects are on view in the Norton Simon Museum’s galleries and sculpture gardens throughout the year. As a tribute to her husband, actress Jennifer Jones Simon oversaw the major renovation of the interior galleries from 1996-1999 by the noted architect Frank O. In October of that year, the name of the institution changed to the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena. After combining the Pasadena Art Museum and Norton Simon collections, it reopened on March 1, 1975. Simon was looking for a permanent location for his gigantic collection of more than 4,000 objects.įrom the Norton Simon Museum website: “On June 24, 1974, the museum closed for renovation. Formerly known as the Pasadena Art Institute (founded in 1922) and then the Pasadena Art Museum (1954), in the 1970s the museum reached out to industrialist Norton Simon, who had become one of the largest art collectors in the world during the 1960s. It had been a couple of years since our last visit to the Norton Simon Museum, and since we had never tried their audio guide, we felt this could be a great way to beat the heat and acquire a bit more knowledge about our home grown tourist attraction.
All told, a terrific museum.Expecting another blistering hot Pasadena afternoon, Tracy and I made up our mind early to hit a museum located in our own home town. After you've checked out the temporary shows, head into the excellent sculpture garden. Other valuable holdings include a generous array of Degas' underappreciated ballerina bronzes, some excellent modern works - including a haunting Modigliani portrait of his wife, some Diego Rivera paintings, plenty of works by the so-called Blue Four (Feininger, Jawlensky, Klee and Kandinsky), and large collections of European prints, Far Eastern art and Buddhist artifacts. The French impressionists are represented by, among others, Monet, Manet and Renoir. The museum is still best known for its impressive collection of Old Masters, notably pieces by 17th-century Dutch painters such as Rembrandt (a particularly rakish self-portrait), Brueghel and Frans Hals. And this is a beautifully designed museum, its collection sympathetically mounted and immaculately captioned. But it also helped it expand the range of its collection, giving it more space and creating a calm, simple environment in which to display it. The Norton Simon's Gehry-helmed makeover in the late 1990s raised the museum's profile.
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