[photo credit: Norton Simon Museum]
On June 5, a museum educator will lead a free one-hour guided tour titled “Norton Simon, the Collector” through the galleries of the Norton Simon Museum at 411 W. Colorado Blvd. The tour, which begins at 5 p.m. during the museum’s monthly Free First Friday, traces how a Portland-born businessman who built a food-industry empire spent 30 years assembling a collection that spans European painting from the 14th to the early 20th centuries and South and Southeast Asian sculpture spanning 2,500 years. Admission is free for all visitors from 4 to 7 p.m.
Space is limited to 20 participants. Sign-up begins at the Information Desk on a first-come, first-served basis when the museum opens at 4 p.m. No advance reservations are accepted. The museum has offered the tour on previous Free First Fridays, including in February 2026 and August 2025, when the program was titled “50 Years: Norton Simon, the Collector.”
Simon’s path from industry to art was anything but predictable. Born on February 5, 1907, in Portland, Oregon, he left the University of California, Berkeley, without a degree and in 1929 invested $7,000 in a bankrupt orange juice bottling plant in Fullerton. He turned that investment into Hunt Foods Inc., and eventually built Norton Simon Inc., a conglomerate that included Hunt-Wesson Foods, McCall’s Publishing, Canada Dry, Max Factor and Avis, according to the Norton Simon Art Foundation.
“Because for me, the respect for what art is all about comes out of looking more than reading, more than formal instruction,” Simon said, according to the museum’s history page.
That philosophy shaped the collection visitors will encounter on the tour. John Walsh of the J. Paul Getty Museum once called Simon “the best collector of our time,” according to a Pasadena Now report. By the time Simon died in 1993, the collection he had assembled filled the museum that bears his name a building on Colorado Boulevard that has been a Pasadena institution since 1975.
The museum’s roots trace to the Pasadena Art Institute, founded in 1922 and later renamed the Pasadena Art Museum. Simon rescued the institution from financial collapse in 1974 by assuming its debts and reorganizing its board. It reopened in March 1975 and was formally renamed the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena on October 24 of that year.
Emily Talbot, the museum’s chief curator, said in a statement to Pasadena Magazine that the institution continues to evolve. “We are so proud to be celebrating 50 years in Pasadena,” Talbot said. “It is the perspectives of people those that work for and with the museum, and those that visit us that help us interpret the collections in new ways.”
The June 5 tour falls at a moment of visible change for the museum. The building, designed in the 1960s by local firm Ladd & Kelsey, is clad in ceramic tiles designed by Edith Heath of Heath Ceramics. In 2025, the institution completed a multimillion-dollar exterior improvement project that restored nearly all of that tile facade, rebuilt the Sculpture Garden pond and updated signage across the campus. Visitors on Free First Friday will also be able to view “Dear Little Friend: Impressions of Galka Scheyer,” an exhibition on view through July 20 that explores the German-born art dealer who helped bring European modernism to the West Coast.
The museum is open Fridays from noon to 7 p.m. Regular admission is $20 for adults and $15 for seniors 62 and older; members, students with valid ID, visitors 18 and under, active military personnel and EBT cardholders enter free at all times. Parking in the museum lot is free. The museum also offers an award-winning audio tour featuring approximately 400 artworks in English and Spanish, accessible via personal mobile devices. The Garden Café, operated by the Patina Restaurant Group, is open during museum hours.
Pasadena Transit lines 10 and 33 stop in front of the museum; Metro bus line 180 also serves the location. For more information, call (626) 449-6840 or visit nortonsimon.org.
Simon once described what he believed art could do. “In today’s world where often scientific development is regarded as the highest goal and where the individual frequently feels alienated from himself and those around him,” he said, “the role of art becomes increasingly important in keeping open the lines of communication.”
Fifty-one years after the museum opened, 20 chairs on the tour will go to whoever shows up first.
