The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena does not have the breadth of the Los Angeles County Museum on Wiltshire Drive, but has several world-class collections. It has varied holdings of late-19th/early-20th-century French painting, including some pre-Impressionist Monets (1865, 1868 seascapes, plus an 1881 garden painting), an 1889 Gauguin portrait of a Tahitian woman and a boy against a green background, five Vuillards, three particularly fine Bonnards ("Le Place Clichy" from 1900 is particularly notable), six Van Goghs (ranging across his various styles, the 1889 "Mulberry Tree" is the one in his most easily recognized style), 9 Toulouse-Lautreacs, a very interesting Seuraut ("Stone Breakers" from 1882), and more than a hundred sculptures and paintings by Edgar Degas. Plus, outside the (recessed) front end of the museum, eleven Rodin sculptures, including the "Burghers of Calais." The artist whose work I have either not seen or not noticed before that particularly struck me was titled "Harmony in Yellow," painted in 1906 by Paul Sérusier, a theorist of the Nibbi group (whatever that might have been), and an admirer of Gauguin. The museum also has an earlier (1891) still life by Sérusier.

It also has four Matisses (all of female figures), three Braques, a Juan Gris still-life (with poems), many Picasso sculptures and paintings (and, currently, a series of lithographs of bulls he did in 1945), a 1918 Modigliani portrait of his wife, Jeanne Hebuterne (plus a death mask of Modigliani executed by Jacques Lipchiz, whose works are well represented in the sculpture garden (see below). Simon seems to have had no interest in the surrealists or Réné Magritte.

Earlier European Painting

Although he did not start collecting art until 1950, Simon managed to acquire works by "Old Masters" whose work was, I thought, nearly all in museums by then and not for sale to private collectors. These include a Lucas Cranach Adam and Eve (and another Cranach, not currently on display), Virgin and Child paintings by Raphael and Botticelli No Vermeer.

Of more prolific painters, the collection includes three Rembrandt portraits (only one of which is currently on display) and a dozen graphics (also not on display), half a dozen Rubens (not one of my favorite painters, but I found his painting of David standing on the head of Goliath entertaining), and a similarly S&Mish Camillus letting the students of a traitorous schoolmaster of Falerii loose on him (ca. 1638). There is a good Canaletto and a pair of second-drawer Bellinis, a pair of top-drawer Titians, and some 14th-century altarpieces by artists whose names I did not recognize (or remember).

The collection includes many Goyas (I recall seeing a set of "Disasters of War" on display on a previous visit). It has no paintings by Velásquez, one androgynous El Greco portrait, one Zurbarán painting.

And a lot of 18th- and 19th-century paintings that did not interest me.

The 20th-century gallery includes a very tall Giacometti bronze, an Emil Nolde painting of a dark sea that I particularly liked, some Kandinskys, nothing by Klimt or Schiele, or Kokochka, a famous Diego Rivera painting of a the back of a woman holding an enormous bundle of cala lilies, nothing by Frida Kahlo, Orozco, or other Mexican painters. Hardly anything American, except for an Andy Warhol pile of Brillo boxes. OK, and some Diebenkorns (and a Thiebaud in storage).

South Asian and Southeast Asian Art

To the best of my recollection, the Norton Simon Museum has the most outstanding collection of South Asian art in the United States. The collection of Gandhara (northern Pakistan/Afghanistan Buddhist) statues is rivaled (in European and American collections) only by the Musée Guimet's collection in Asia. The Simon also has Hindu sculptures from Uttar Pradesh (in northern Indian) and Tamil Nadu (in southeastern India) rivaling in number and quality the pieces in the British Museum.

It also has many outstanding Tibetan Buddhist sculptures and paintings (from Tibet and Nepal), and "ancient" (which was contemporaneous with "medieval" in the West, and the Yüan dynasty in China) sculptures from Khmer (Cambodian) cultures, including Angkor, and from Sukkothai and Ayuthayya in what is now Thailand, plus some pieces from Burma. Provenance is shall we say "smudged" (like the Roman antiquities of the Getty), but however they made their way to Pasadena, they are well-cared-for and well-displayed now (and Pasadena is closer for me than Paris...).

Highly selective among Asian art traditions (with nothing from Japan or from China (unless one recognizes the annexation of Tibet as legitimate), but these traditions are well represented up the street (within Pasadena) in the Pacific Asia Museum (where we went next, see Jiahong's review at http://www.epinions.com/content_183696199300) and LACMA (which has a whole building of Japanese art, though built so as to mae it difficult to see the paintings well).

Garden

Along with remodeling the galleries (supervised by Frank Gehry, who designed the new Getty), the Norton Simon Museum recently added a Monet-inspired lily pond (planned by Nancy Goslee Power), with sculptures by Henry Moores, Jacques Lipschiz, and others around it. A freeway entrance is on the other side of a fence, so there is traffic noise, but the garden is quite beautiful.

Just outside the museum in the garden is a café selling prepackaged sandwiches, salads, and junk food.

The Museum Store is not huge.

Photography (still or video) is permitted for private noncommercial use. Flashes and tripods are prohibited.

Strollers are also permitted.

Hours: The Simon is open daily, except for Tuesdays, from noon until 6 PM, Fridays until 8 PM. It is closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.

Admission is $8 for adults, $4 for persons aged 62 or more, free for those under age 18 or students with valid ID. Admission is free from 6 PM to 9 PM the first Friday of each month.

The address is 411 W. Colorado Avenue (Colorado Avenue is the main shopping and restaurant street through old Pasadena).

The museum has free parking that does not require reservations.

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Much of the Simon collection is digitized and can be examined online at
http://www.nortonsimon.org/collections/

Norton Simon (1907-1993) was a Southern California businessmen who built the Hunt Food Company into Norton Simon Inc., a conglomerate that included McCall's Publishing, Canada Dry, Max Factor, and Avis. He married Jennifer Jones in 1971 and dangled his art collection in front of various museums before the Pasadena Museum agreed to change its name to the Norton Simon Museum in 1974. (He then tried to deaccession its holdings, I'm told.)



Recommended: Yes

Best Time to Travel Here: Mar - May