Retrospect: 50 Years at the Norton Simon Museum

Pasadena, CA – The Norton Simon Museum commemorates its 50th anniversary with the exhibition Retrospect: 50 Years at the Norton Simon Museum. On view from February 14, 2025, through January 12, 2026, in the main-level Focus Gallery, this milestone exhibition examines five decades of art, education, research and community through an engaging collection of rare archival photographs, texts and insights into the Museum’s current initiatives. Retrospect coincides with the launch of the Exterior Improvement Project, providing a unique opportunity to reflect on the Museum’s rich history while looking toward the future.

Retrospect begins with the Museum’s name change in 1975 after Norton Simon assumed control of the former Pasadena Art Museum. Captivating archival photography illustrating the initial installation of Simon’s celebrated collections and views of the galleries from the late 1970s are presented alongside anecdotal vignettes of the Museum’s early staff. Key acquisitions and exhibitions are highlighted chronologically, featuring intriguing stories from the collections, such as the notable donation of Diego Rivera’s The Flower Vendor (1941) by Hollywood legend Cary Grant. This introductory section traces the evolution of the Museum’s exhibition programming, from rotating displays of works on paper to ambitious thematic and cross-collection shows.

A special focus on the Museum’s building reveals the rich architectural history woven into its walls. Designed by the firm Ladd & Kelsey for the Pasadena Art Museum, the building features an irregular H-shaped layout and modernist curves, adorned with approximately 115,000 tiles crafted by ceramicist Edith Heath. Archival photographs document the building’s evolution, from its early years to the renovations of the interior by Frank Gehry and gardens by Nancy Goslee Power in the late 1990s. Images are in close proximity to renderings of the current Exterior Improvement Project, setting the stage for a new era for the Museum and its campus.

The exhibition concludes by spotlighting the transformative years from 2000 to 2025, a period marked by the expansion of signature programs across its Art, Conservation, External Affairs and Education Departments. In 2001, the theater was refurbished by Arthur Gensler, Jr. & Associates, offering a new venue for film screenings, lectures and performances. Curators, scholars and conservators collaborated to produce an exciting series of scholarly catalogues on the collections. In 2007, the Museum introduced its Masterpiece Loan Exchange program, bringing some of the world’s most extraordinary works of art to Pasadena while sending paintings from the Norton Simon collections to museums across the country and in Europe. Diego Velázquez’s extraordinary painting Queen Mariana of Austria (1652–53), on view at the Museum through March 24, 2025, in the exhibition Mariana: Velázquez’s Portrait of a Queen from the Museo Nacional del Prado, is part of this exchange program.

Retrospect: 50 Years at the Norton Simon Museum is curated by Dane Reeb, Curatorial Assistant, and Kate Austin, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator.