2010 - 2019

Exhibition Archive for 2010 - 2019

Duchamp to Pop
March 4, 2016 – August 29, 2016

R.I.P.: On Art and Mourning
September 8, 2017 – November 27, 2017

Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor
November 10, 2017 – April 9, 2018

The Norton Simon Museum presents Taking Shape: Degas as Sculptor, an illuminating exhibition that explores the compulsive nature of Edgar Degas’s artistic practice. Focusing on the Museum’s collection of modèles, the first and only set of bronzes cast from the artist’s original wax and clay statuettes, Taking Shape considers the affinities among sculpting, painting and drawing in Degas’s oeuvre. By presenting the modèle bronzes alongside related compositions from the Norton Simon’s renowned collection, this expansive body of Degas’s works celebrates the artist’s boundless enthusiasm for creation, and the act of making as an end in itself.

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Tub, 1889, Bronze no. 26, modèle cast, Norton Simon Art Foundation

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Rembrandt’s ‘Self Portrait at the Age of 34’ on loan from The National Gallery, London
December 8, 2017 – March 5, 2018

Rembrandt’s striking self-portrait from 1640, on loan from The National Gallery, London, arrives in the U.S. this winter season for this first time. Titled Self Portrait at the Age of 34, the painting captures the image of the artist in his middle age: affluent, self-confident and wise.

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Self Portrait at the Age of 34, 1640, oil on canvas, 102 x 80 cm, © The National Gallery, London

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Rembrandt: Prints “of a Particular Spirit”
December 8, 2017 – March 5, 2018

Twenty-one prints from the Museum’s expansive collection of Rembrandt etchings are on view in this intimate but captivating exhibition, organized to celebrate the installation of Rembrandt’s Self Portrait at the Age of 34, on loan this season from The National Gallery, London.

Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606–1669), Self-Portrait with Saskia, 1636, Etching, State I, Norton Simon Art Foundation , © Norton Simon Art Foundation

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In Search of New Markets: Craft Traditions in Nineteenth-Century India
April 6, 2018 – January 7, 2019

This intimate exhibition explores how Indian craft traditions were re-imagined for the export market in the 19th century.

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Line & Color: The Nature of Ellsworth Kelly
June 1, 2018 – October 29, 2018

Line & Color: The Nature of Ellsworth Kelly illustrates how Kelly, one of the progenitors of modernism, drew inspiration from nature and translated that into his own form of abstraction.

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Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido
December 7, 2018 – May 27, 2019

This captivating exhibition presents rare tapestries and related cartoons, or preparatory drawings, from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Royal Hunt and Storm (detail), c. 1630–35
Giovanni Francesco Romanelli (Italian, 1610–1662)
Gouache and black chalk on paper, laid down on linen
109-5/8 x 138 in. (278.4 x 350.5 cm)
The Norton Simon Foundation

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Titian’s 'Portrait of a Lady in White,' c. 1561, on loan from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
December 19, 2018 – March 25, 2019

Titian’s beguiling Lady in White from c. 1561, on loan from the Dresden Gemäldegalerie, makes it Southern California debut at the Simon Museum this winter.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, Italian, c. 1488/90–1576)
Portrait of a Lady in White, c. 1561
Oil on canvas, 102 x 86 cm
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Photo: Elke Estel/ Hans-Peter Klut

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Matisse/Odalisque
February 22, 2019 – June 17, 2019

This focus exhibition explores the theme of the odalisque in European art in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Featuring pictures by Henri Matisse, Frédéric Bazille, and Pablo Picasso, among others, it shows that artists employed dazzling combinations of color and ornament to foreground the orientalist subject as a work of pictorial fantasy.

[Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954), Odalisque with Tambourine (Harmony in Blue) (detail) 1926, Oil on canvas, Norton Simon Art Foundation, © 2019 Succession H. Matisse/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]

Odalisque with Tambourine (Harmony in Blue) (detail) 1926
Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954)
Oil on canvas
Norton Simon Art Foundation
© 2018 Succession H. Matisse/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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The Sweetness of Life: Three 18th-Century French Paintings from The Frick Collection
June 14, 2019 – September 9, 2019

The Museum hosts three remarkable 18th-century French genre paintings from The Frick Collection in New York this summer, part of an ongoing reciprocal exchange program. These artfully constructed visions of contemporary life and fashion, as depicted by François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, provide viewers with an intimate look at the lives of middle-class French women of the 1740s and 1750s.

François Boucher (French, 1703–1770)
A Lady on Her Day Bed, 1743
Oil on canvas
22 1/2 x 26 7/8 in. (57.2 x 68.3 cm)
Purchased by The Frick Collection, 1937

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AIR LAND SEA: A Lithographic Suite by William Crutchfield
July 19, 2019 – November 4, 2019

This exhibition presents a rare look at the AIR LAND SEA suite by William Crutchfield, printed at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in 1970. Demonstrating the artist’s master draftsmanship, keen understanding of engineering and his wry sense of humor, the suite features trains, ships and airplanes all portrayed as overbuilt, fantastical models of modernity.

Air Land Sea VIII: Cathedral Steamer, 1970
William Richard Crutchfield (American, 1932-2015)
Lithograph
Sheet: 12-1/2 x 11-1/2 in. (31.75 x 29.21 cm.); Image: 9 x 9-1/4 in. (22.86 x 23.50 cm.)
Norton Simon Museum, Anonymous Gift, 1972
© 2019 William Crutchfield

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By Day & by Night: Paris in the Belle Époque
October 4, 2019 – March 2, 2020

By Day & by Night celebrates the innovative spirit of art and culture in Paris during the belle époque through a selection of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs from the Museum’s collections.

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Paul Gauguin's 'The Swineherd,' 1888, on loan from LACMA
November 13, 2019 – April 22, 2024

Paul Gauguin’s picturesque painting The Swineherd from 1888 is on long-term loan from LACMA, joining related post-Impressionist works in the Museum’s 19th-century art wing.

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Beyond the World We Know: Abstraction in Photography
November 22, 2019 – August 2, 2021

In their integration of realism and abstraction, the gelatin silver prints on view in Beyond the World We Know demonstrate that the simplest subjects can be evocative works of art when composition, texture, tone and light are handled by artists of great imagination and virtuosity.

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