From the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, American industrialist Norton Simon amassed a remarkable private collection of European art from the 14th to early 20th centuries and South and Southeast Asian sculpture that spans 2,500 years of production. Throughout the 1960s, he lent selected works to institutions across the country in a program he termed a “museum without walls.” As his holdings expanded, Norton Simon sought a permanent location where his collections could be displayed to the public.

An opportunity arose in 1971, when Norton Simon entered into discussions with the Trustees of the Pasadena Art Museum. Established in 1924 as the Pasadena Art Institute, the art museum rose to prominence in the 1960s for its exhibitions of the work of eminent 20th-century artists, including Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Richard Serra and Judy Chicago. By the early 1970s, however, the Pasadena Art Museum faced serious financial difficulties stemming from the construction of its new building on the corner of West Colorado Boulevard and Orange Grove Boulevard, completed in 1969.

Following negotiations with the Pasadena Art Museum’s leadership, Simon agreed to resolve the institution’s debts. In return, he reorganized the Board of Trustees and assumed management of the Museum’s building and collection. The Museum closed in April 1974 for refurbishments and the installation of Simon’s collection and reopened in March 1975. On October 24, 1975, the Museum was officially renamed the Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena. 

When the Museum reopened in 1975, Asian sculpture, European paintings and 20th-century art were displayed upstairs. Nineteenth-century art was installed downstairs, alongside extensive displays of prints.

Throughout the late 1970s and ’80s, Norton Simon continued to acquire important works of art for the Museum. Several of the works he purchased––now considered highlights of the collections––made headlines for appearing on the market unexpectedly or for breaking auction records. He expanded the collection further with considerable acquisitions of prints by Rembrandt, Goya and Picasso, which were organized into floor-to-ceiling displays across the galleries. Over the years, curators developed these installations into a robust, thematic, cross-collections exhibition program, now situated in the lower-level galleries.

1977
Norton Simon purchases the nearly complete set of Degas’s bronze modèles for $1.8 million. After being exhibited at the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, where they are the subject of an important symposium, the majority of the sculptures are installed in the Museum in May 1978.

1980
Norton Simon acquires Dieric Bouts’s Resurrection (c. 1455) at auction for $3.7 million––the highest price he ever pays for a work of art.

1980
Hollywood icon Cary Grant, a Museum Trustee and friend of Norton and Jennifer Jones Simon, donates Diego Rivera’s The Flower Vendor (Girl with Lilies) (1941).

1981
Norton Simon and the J. Paul Getty Museum jointly acquire Nicolas Poussin’s The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist and St. Elizabeth (1650–51) at a Christie’s auction.

1982
The Museum installs Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker (1880) on a plinth facing Colorado Boulevard. 

1983
Joining forces again, Norton Simon and the J. Paul Getty Museum acquire Edgar Degas’s Waiting (c. 1879–82) for $3.74 million, setting a record price for an Impressionist work at auction.

1984
Norton Simon acquires Pablo Picasso’s Woman with Mandolin (1925) at auction. The painting is installed at the Museum in a display of over 165 works by the Spanish artist.

1989
Norton Simon acquires Gustave Courbet’s Peasant Girl with a Scarf (c. 1849), the final purchase of his remarkable career as an art collector.

1993
On June 2, Simon dies at age 86. Following his passing, the Museum ceases to purchase works of art, devoting itself to the preservation, research and display of its collections.  

The Museum’s 85,000-square-foot building was designed by the architectural firm Ladd & Kelsey for the Pasadena Art Museum. The modernist building features rounded walls, an irregular H-shaped layout and an exterior clad in approximately 115,000 tiles designed by Edith Heath of Heath Ceramics. Since the Norton Simon Museum’s establishment, the interior of the building has been adapted to better complement Norton Simon’s collections. As early as 1974, the architect Craig Ellwood erected large partitions in the galleries to expand the available wall space for works on paper and to provide a backdrop for the sculpture collection. Twenty years later, in 1995, the Board of Trustees and Norton Simon’s widow, Jennifer Jones Simon, enlisted architect Frank O. Gehry to completely renovate the Museum’s interior. Gehry added skylights to the main galleries, raised the ceilings, squared off curved walls and divided the wings into more intimate rooms. The lower-level galleries were transformed to provide a harmonious space for South and Southeast Asian sculpture and a dedicated location for rotating exhibitions.

Alongside Gehry’s renovations to the galleries, landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power reimagined the Sculpture Garden. Taking inspiration from Claude Monet’s property in Giverny, France, Power replaced the rectangular reflecting pool with an organically shaped pond. She added several varieties of water lilies to the pond’s surface, while planting iris, daylily, lavender and yellow bells around its edge. A footpath was laid across the grounds, enabling visitors to discover sculptures by such artists as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Aristide Maillol. Historic plants from the original site were maintained in Power’s design, including the grove of eucalyptus, the Moreton Bay fig and the large coral tree near the rear of the pond. At the entrance to the Museum, Power and Museum curators installed sculptures by Auguste Rodin under a canopy of Mexican sycamores.

The transformation of the Museum’s building and Sculpture Garden in the 1990s catalyzed a period of growth within the institution. Seeking wider community engagement, Museum leadership significantly increased the institution’s hours and offerings. In 2001, the theater was refurbished by Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates, Inc., providing a venue for film screenings, lectures and performances. At the same time, curators, scholars and conservators began collaborating to produce catalogues documenting the collections’ areas of strength. The Museum also joined Pasadena Unified School District’s My Masterpieces program, providing Museum tours to fifth-grade students throughout the city. This year, the Exterior Improvement Project will beautify the grounds and increase safety, accessibility and sustainability in the building’s entryway and Sculpture Garden. Undertaken in celebration of the 50th anniversary, these enhancements reaffirm the Museum’s commitment to the collections and to its community of patrons for years to come.

1998
Longtime Los Angeles Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic publishes her biography Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture. 

1999
As part of a collaborative program across Pasadena, Radical Past: Highlights from the Collection and Archives of the Pasadena Art Museum commemorates the contributions of the Pasadena Art Museum to the Los Angeles contemporary arts scene.   

2000
To inaugurate the refurbished theater, the Museum premieres The Art of Norton Simon. Directed by Davis Guggenheim and supported by the Norton Simon Art Foundation, this film details Simon’s life and legacy as a collector.

2001
The Universe: Creation, Constellations and the Cosmos explores how artists across the globe have visualized spiritual connections beyond our world.

2006
The Collectible Moment: Photographs in the Norton Simon Museum presents the first comprehensive survey of the Museum’s photography collection.

2007
As part of the Museum’s inaugural Loan Exchange Program, Rembrandt’s Portrait of a Boy (1655–60), formerly known as Titus, travels to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for a special installation. The program brings extraordinary works of art to Pasadena, while sharing paintings from the Norton Simon collections with museums across the United States and Europe.

2007
Between 2007 and 2024, the Museum significantly improves the seismic stability of the sculpture collection by installing new pedestals equipped with base isolators.

2008
The Museum enters into a partnership with the Getty Museum’s Paintings Conservation Department for the technical analysis and treatment of select works from the Norton Simon collections, including paintings by Francisco de Zurbarán, Rembrandt, Édouard Manet and more.

2010
Authored by former senior curator Sara Campbell Abdo, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best details the history of Simon’s collecting career.

2011
As part of the Getty’s inaugural Pacific Standard Time initiative, Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California and its accompanying catalogue chart the revival of printmaking in Los Angeles in the 1960s.

2014
The Museum hosts its inaugural Garden Party with art-making activities, live music and plein air drawing.

2017
Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California showcases the life and career of Galka Scheyer, the impresario dealer responsible for the art phenomenon of the “Blue Four”—Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Vassily Kandinsky.

2022
Picasso Ingres: Face to Face joins Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Madame Moitessier (1856) from the National Gallery, London, with the painting it inspired, Pablo Picasso’s Woman with a Book (1932) from the Norton Simon collections.

2023
In 2023, the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation celebrates the centennial of Kelly’s birth by donating several preparatory studies for White over Blue (1967), a painting held in the collections. On the same occasion, printmaking studio Gemini G.E.L. gifts five lithographs by the artist. These donations greatly enhance the Museum’s collection of two paintings, three drawings and 62 lithographs by the artist.