Pasadena · Collection built up over more than 30 years · Renaissance in the 20th century

The Norton Simon Museum presents in Pasadena one of the great private collections that have become public, from European masters to the arts of South and Southeast Asia.

The history of the Norton Simon Museum begins with the Pasadena Art Institute founded in 1922. Faced with the debts of its new building, the institution concluded an agreement in 1974 with the industrialist and collector Norton Simon. The museum bringing together the two ensembles reopened in March 1975 and took its current name the same year. In more than thirty years, Simon has built up a collection of around twelve thousand objects: European paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance to the 20th century century, modern American art, as well as a remarkable collection of South and Southeast Asian arts. Delacroix, Matisse, Rembrandt and Raphael illustrate the diversity of his European masterpieces. The "Norton Simon Museum" selection puts particularly in view of The Crucifixion - Eugène Delacroix and Odalisque on tambourine, Harmony in blue - Henri Matisse. His reading favors the material.

In Pasadena, Norton Simon's gaze brings together several centuries and several continents in a collection designed to be seen as a living whole.