Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front, modeled mid- to late-1880s; cast 1919-22, bronze, Norton Simon Art Foundation
The Norton Simon Museum will host a free hour-long guided tour devoted to the sculptures of Edgar Degas on Saturday, August 1, 2026, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., according to the museum’s event listing. Museum Educator Liz Sussman will lead the program.
The tour, titled “Degas and His Sculptures,” will focus on several of the 19th-century French artist’s bronzes. The museum describes the session as an examination of how Degas’s modeled figures capture gesture, balance and motion. The program is one of the free events the Pasadena museum offers to visitors as part of general admission.
Access is limited. According to the museum, space is capped at 20 participants, and there is no advance reservation. Sign-up is taken in person at the Information Desk when the museum opens, on a first-come, first-served basis. The museum opens at 12:00 p.m. on Saturdays. Those admitted to the tour meet in the Entrance Gallery. The museum is located at 411 West Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.
The tour draws on one of the deepest collections of Degas anywhere. The Norton Simon holds more than 100 works by the artist, spanning nearly every decade of his career and nearly every medium in which he worked, from paintings and pastels to prints and sculpture. The museum describes the grouping as the second-largest assembled by a single collector, after the Havemeyer collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
That collection grew last year. In late summer 2025, during the museum’s 50th-anniversary year, the Norton Simon acquired the bronze “Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front” and placed it on view October 2, 2025 in the museum’s 19th-century wing, according to a museum press release. The acquisition completed a set that had been incomplete since 1977, when Norton Simon bought an almost-complete group of Degas sculptures that was missing two works. The museum has said the sculptures offer insight into how Degas thought about process, the human body and movement.
General admission is $20 for adults and $15 for seniors ages 62 and above, according to the museum’s ticketing page. Admission is free for children 18 and under, students with valid identification, and museum members. Admission is also free to all visitors on the first Friday of each month from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. On Saturdays the museum is open from 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Advance general-admission tickets are recommended but not required, the museum says, and the August 1 tour itself carries no separate fee beyond admission.
The Norton Simon Museum can be reached at 626.449.6840, and additional program information is available on its website.
