“Museum” derives its name from Muse, meaning one of the nine goddesses mothered by Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and fathered by (who else?) that rascally old horndog, Zeus. The link with memory is essential, since most museumgoers started young.
Many of us carry high-def Total Recall of staring up at a Haida totem pole, alone in a darkened gallery, feeling our pulse escalate like drumbeats in the rapt silence. Or maybe, with a farewell nod to Roberta Flack, the first time ever we saw the Cloister’s unicorn tapestries, finally bigger than a postcard. Or that first Warhol. Or first Basquiat. Your first Degas.
The visceral experience of being in the presence of art – of any medium, any genre– is essential to our humanity. Many sociologists and psychologists describe the effects as spiritual, even religious, and so it is only right that we receive the experience with reverence. Industrialist and philanthropist Norton Simon himself said “I am not essentially a religious person, but my feeling about a museum is that it can serve as a substitute for a house of worship. It is a place to respect man’s creativity and to sense a continuity with the past. It is a place to give us a feeling of the dignity of man and to help us to strive towards our own creativity and fulfillment.”
But hey, wait. Art is supposed to be fun right? Many of us have been shushed in galleries as though we were in fact in church. And even most church-going has gotten louder, looser and a whole heck of a lot rowdier in the past few decades.
We recently chatted with Emily Talbot, Chief Curator for Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. The Museum will mark the achievement with special exhibitions and programming, a publication, and a dazzling exterior improvement project.
Talbot says that the formality of past museum-going experiences has changed. “We hold firm to Norton Simon’s values, which are based on transforming a private collection into a shared public resource.” She further points out that “…in the past, museum-going was entirely visual. Viewing masterpieces on the walls naturally calls for an air of quiet contemplation. Today, we engage our guests in more and different ways. We know so much more now about the differing ways in which people perceive and learn, and what they respond to.”
Museums further loom large in memory because the buildings which house them are themselves often imposing cathedrals of privilege and power. Because of this, we may feel a pang of something like betrayal when our beloved old museums, especially cozy, familiar, dowdy ones, get their frisky midlife makeovers. Retrospect: 50 Years at the Norton Simon Museum now underway may shock some regular visitors, along the lines of “Where did the Monet waterlily pond go?” and “Where can I buy my snack?” – but these and many other questions are sure to be resolved in this visionary cultural and institutional remembering and reimagining that looks forward instead of back.
About the pond. It has been drained, its red slider turtles safely relocated, and its ducks, Canada Geese, occasional heron and darting jewels in the form of dragon-and damsel-flies have taken to the particle-laden skies until further notice.
Appreciating the outdoor space that’s part of the Norton Simon is essential to understanding the essence of the place, and where it will go next. After Simon’s death in 1993, his widow, Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Jones, hired Frank Gehry to reconfigure the museum’s interior and engaged Nancy Goslee Power to design the 79,000-square foot sculpture garden with the requirement that the exterior landscape be made to resemble Giverny.
This proved a challenge since the modish original building and its gardens had been designed the 1960s to house the former Pasadena Art Museum’s contemporary collections. The footprint was a mismatch for Simon’s eclectic collection of millennia-old South Asian sculptures, and priceless masterpieces of European art, both sacred and secular, including Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings and Old Masters. To break the logjam, Power boldly ripped out the boxy, rectangular concrete pool and in its place built a lush free-form pond, made convincingly swampy with plants that suggest Monet’s sanctuary with plants that thrive in the quite-different Southern California climate.
Leslie Denk, Vice President of External affairs for the Norton Simon, comments that the new pool will be smaller than Power’s, and that the sculpture garden which surrounds it will be closed for approximately the next nine months. Denk says Nancy has been consulted along the way as an architectural firm and a landscape architect carry out the execution of project.
Other exterior improvements including new driveways, pedestrian paths and signage to make the entrance to the Norton Simon parking lot more visible, since the current greenery-cloaked entry ramp is so discreetly tasteful that even long-standing members may occasionally miss it.
A new circular logo featuring a detail from original 1960s branding by John Kelsey flags innovative developments across current exhibitions and events.
And for now, regarding coffee, tea, wine, beer, the Café is relocated on the museum’s lower level.
To kick off the metamorphosis, a collection of rarely seen archival photographs now greets visitors in the Focus Gallery off the Main Entrance Gallery, providing intimate insights into museum activities and operations. Museumgoers may glean even more knowledge through engaging the companion exhibit called 50 Objects, a gallery-wide initiative which highlights unique features about 50 diverse works of art in the museum’s collections, accessible through the Museum’s anniversary microsite found at www.nortonsimon.org.
In summer 2025, the Museum will debut a new publication, Recollections: Stories from the Norton Simon Museum. Authored by current and recent staff, the book will include 13 short essays, each illuminating an aspect of the Museum’s history through a particular work of art.
The updated gardens and all other features are scheduled to re-open on October 24, when Talbot days “We will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding with the opening of Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft, an exhibition curated by Associate Curator Maggie Bell and Assistant Curator Lakshika Senarath Gamage. Taking the precious material associated with 50th anniversaries as a jumping-off point, Gold explores the visual cultures of South and Southeast Asia, Europe, North Africa and North America through a diverse group of objects from the Norton Simon Museum’s collections.”
It does seem like an especially cruel twist of fate that this cherished cultural hub should be even partially withheld from us when we need it most. Of course, for millennia the Olympians have mocked the best-laid schemes of mortal men with hard laughter.
The only rational response is to go, now. Go often. Bring someone who hasn’t been in an art museum since we all wore crunchy, mousse-abuse high hair and acid-washed denim.
“The social and emotional importance of art could not be more clear,” says Emily Talbot.
DEETS
- The Norton Simon Museum
- 411 West Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, 91105
- Active military personnel with valid ID are admitted at no charge, as are holders of the EBT (CalFresh SNAP) card, students with ID, children under the age of 18, visitors who are legally blind, and caregivers accompanying museumgoers with disabilities.
- Advance tickets recommended: Tickets
- Admission is free for all visitors the first Friday of every month (“Free Fridays”) between 4:00 to 7:00 PM.
- The Museum is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays, opening other days at 12 noon. Check Web site for closing times.
- Accessible by Pasadena Transit, Metro bus line #180, 181
- 626-449-6840
