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.