[photo credit: Norton Simon Museum]
Scheyer’s connection to the museum is not incidental. Her estate’s 1953 donation delivered an estimated 450 to 500 works to the institution’s predecessor, the Pasadena Art Institute, including the Blue Four holdings — paintings and works on paper by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Alexei Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger. The exhibition focuses on a figure whose gift shaped part of the Pasadena collection.
Scheyer represented those artists and settled in Los Angeles in 1925. The museum holds more than 12,000 objects, of which about 1,000 are on view across its galleries and gardens at any one time, according to the museum. The holdings range from European work of the Renaissance through the 20th century to South and Southeast Asian art spanning some 2,000 years.
Founded in 1922 as the Pasadena Art Institute and later known as the Pasadena Art Museum, the institution was renamed for industrialist Norton Simon in 1975, the year after he assumed control of the financially troubled museum. Its building, completed in 1969 and designed by Pasadena architects Thornton Ladd and John Kelsey, is faced in roughly 115,000 brown glazed tiles. The curving façade sits at the corner of Colorado Boulevard and Orange Grove Boulevard, where the Rose Parade turns each New Year’s Day.
The museum marked its 50th anniversary in 2025 with about $15 million in upgrades to its gardens and façade. The building stands on land leased from the City of Pasadena, under a long-term agreement that runs to 2050.
The Norton Simon Museum is at 411 W. Colorado Blvd. Hours are noon to 5 p.m. Thursday, Sunday and Monday, and noon to 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday; it is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. General admission is $20, $15 for seniors 62 and older, and free for visitors 18 and under, students with identification, members and active-duty military personnel. Admission is free for all visitors on the first Friday of each month from 4 to 7 p.m. Parking is free.
An upcoming exhibition, “Making History,” built around a Manet painting, is scheduled to open Nov. 13.
Norton Simon Museum — General Admission | Open Thu 12–5, Fri 12–7, Sat 12–7, Sun 12–5, Mon 12–5 (closed Tue/Wed) | Free for ages 18 and under. |🔗 https://www.nortonsimon.org/
