Norton Simon Museum
The Norton Simon Museum is an Art Museum located in Pasadena, California. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds.
Former name
Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena Art Museum
March 1, 1975
Art museum
approximately 12,500 objects / approximately 800 objects on display
Walter W. Timoshuk
Emily Talbot
Ladd + Kelsey
Metro Local Bus 180,256 / Pasadena Transit Route 10
Overview[edit]
The Norton Simon collections include: European paintings, sculptures, and tapestries; Asian sculptures, paintings, and woodblock prints. Outside sculptures surround the museum, with notable Rodin sculptures near its entrance and other sculptures along Colorado Boulevard and in a landscape setting around a large pond.[1] The museum contains the Norton Simon Theater which shows film programs daily, and hosts lectures, symposia, and dance and musical performances year-round. The museum is located on Colorado Boulevard along the route of the Tournament of Roses's Rose Parade, where its distinctive, brown tile exterior can be seen in the background of television broadcasts.
'Hindu Goddess' from Nepal, c. 1700, gilt bronze
Management[edit]
The Norton Simon is organized as an operating foundation, devoting its resources to its own public benefit activities. The operating budget is about $6 million.[14] The museum building, which is owned by the board of trustees, stands on land leased from the City of Pasadena for $1 a year. The 75-year lease runs until 2050. Negotiations in the past included possible moves to San Francisco and UCLA, as well as an affiliation with the J. Paul Getty Trust.[22]
Jennifer Jones' Hollywood connections brought members of the film and television community, including Billy Wilder, Gregory Peck, Cary Grant, David Geffen, Tom Brokaw, and Candice Bergen, to the Norton Simon's museum board.[23]
Rembrandt, Portrait of a Boy, 1655
Vincent van Gogh, Mulberry Tree, 1889
Selected art images of Norton Simon Museum.
Art repatriation issues[edit]
In 2012, the Cambodian government asked the United States to help it recover a 10th-century Khmer sandstone statue from the Norton Simon Museum, saying the work was looted from a Cambodian temple complex during the country's political upheavals in the 1970s. The sculpture in question was owned by the Norton Simon Art Foundation and has been on display since 1980, and although Cambodian authorities have long known it was there, they had not sought its return until recently.[24] In the spring of 2014, the Norton Simon returned the sculpture to the Kingdom of Cambodia.[25]
From 2007 until 2018, the museum was embroiled in a legal dispute over rightful ownership of Lucas Cranach the Elder's 1530 paired paintings Adam and Eve. Marei van Saher filed suit, seeking the return of the paintings and alleging that they were confiscated by the Nazi's from her father-in-law, Jacques Goudstikker, a prominent Dutch Jewish art dealer. Goudstikker died on board a ship with his family while attempting to flee the Netherlands. After the war, the paintings were recovered by the Monuments Men and returned to the Dutch government. In the 1960s, the Dutch government transferred them to United States Naval Commander George Stroganoff-Scherbatoff, who claimed they had previously been stolen from his family in Russia by the Stalinist government and sold to Goudstikker in a widely criticized estate auction in Berlin. The paintings were sold in the early 1970s by the Commander to Norton Simon and his foundations, and they have been on display in the Norton Simon Museum of Art for more than 30 years.[26] Despite ethical concerns expressed by many, including the grandson of founder Norton Simon, the Norton Simon Museum continued its legal battle to keep the works.[14] The Norton Simon Museum's defense hinges on a legal sale by the Dutch government to Commander Stroganoff-Scherbatoff after the owner's widow declined a settlement with the government in 1966. During the case in 2012, the court heard that "The Dutch government itself undermined the legitimacy of [the] restitution process by describing it as 'bureaucratic, cold and often even callous."[27] The museum sought U.S. Supreme Court review of a June 2014 ruling delivered by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that allowed von Saher to continue her claim;[26] the Supreme Court had declined to hear a prior stage of the case in 2010.[28] In 2017, the court ruled 3–0 against von Saher.[29]
