It’s Change, but in the Spirit of Norton Simon : Art: The museum has repainted and reinstalled two of its wings. Interpreting the collection in new ways is one of the goals, its director says.

The death of Norton Simon on June 2 raised nervous questions about the fate of his extraordinary art collection, but the answers were reassuring. The collection would not be sold, dispersed or moved, as had been widely rumored. The $750-million treasure trove of 12,000 works--including European painting from the Renaissance to the 20th Century, and India and Southeast Asian sculpture produced over a 2,000-year span--would remain intact at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.

Furthermore, a press release said, “the board and staff are committed to continuing to manage the institution consistent with the philosophy and principles Mr. Simon established over the years.”

Nothing has transpired since Simon’s death to cast new doubt on the future of the museum, which is the finest to be assembled since World War II. Simon’s will is not a matter of public record, but the museum has investable assets of $15.5 million, and the late industrialist reportedly provided a substantial gift to the foundations that support his namesake.

Change is afoot at the Norton Simon Museum, however. Two wings of the main floor have been repainted and reinstalled, giving the galleries and the collection a strikingly new look--even as the staff and trustees contemplate how to carry on in the best Simon tradition.

“We want to do what Norton Simon would have wanted, to continue in the same spirit,” said Sara Campbell, Simon’s longtime curator. In September Campbell was appointed director of the museum, essentially formalizing the role she’s played for the museum since Simon became ill in the last several years of his life.

Simon’s spirit emerged in the quality of art he selected, but also in his creative approach, Campbell said. “He always questioned why things had to be done this way instead of that way. He never believed that you had to do something a certain way just because it had been done that way. Mr. Simon had a very creative eye, but a critical one.”

Indeed, Simon was famous in art circles for grilling experts on any subject that caught his attention--and for making up his mind himself. He knew every artwork in his huge collection. What’s more, he could remember where and when he had bought each piece, how much he had paid and the exact exchange rate for purchases made in foreign currency.

After he was stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder, Simon was forced to reduce his activity at the museum. Since 1989, his wife, actress Jennifer Jones Simon, has served as museum president and chairwoman of the board.

Now the public can see that the institution is on the move--and that the changes are intended to enhance the collection.

*

Designed for the Pasadena Art Museum’s program of contemporary art, the building was used for that purpose until 1974, when Simon took over the museum’s financial burden as well its collection and established his own showcase. He remodeled the building before its opening as the Norton Simon in 1975. The recent changes go a step further in adapting the galleries to the works he collected.

Most of the formerly white walls have been painted in grayed hues to divide the space and create a more intimate sense of viewing. In the northwest wing’s display of 17th- and 18th-Century European artworks, the walls of the long corridor gallery are gray on one side and taupe on the other, and the grand gallery at the end of the hall is a light blue.

A few key paintings--including Francisco de Zurbaran’s “Still Life With Lemons, Oranges and a Rose” and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s “Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance”--remain in their customary places. But most other paintings have been moved by curator Gloria Williams, who supervised this part of the reinstallation. The object was to provide more chronological coherence, highlight strengths of the collection and call attention to correspondences among individual works, Campbell said.

As it tracks art’s course through the 17th and 18th centuries, the new installation offers comparisons between landscapes by French artist Claude Lorrain and his Dutch counterpart, Jacob van Ruisdael, and between treatments of religious themes by two Spanish artists, Zurbaran in “Birth of the Virgin” and Bartolome Esteban Murrilo in “Birth of St. John the Baptist.”

Works representing the light touch of rococo provide intimate views of social life by such artists as Jean Honore Fragonard and Jean-Baptiste Pater. A sampling of Dutch painting--genre, religious, landscape, still life and portraiture--serves as a touchstone for a another new installation, “Encountering the Dutch Likeness: Portraiture in 17th-Century Holland,” on the museum’s lower floor.

The 19th- and 20th-Century galleries, reorganized by Campbell, also follow a chronological format, from the Barbizon School’s views of nature through Impressionism’s exploration of light to the bold strokes of Cubism. But the march of history allows for a few detours, such as to a group of landscapes painted in sharply receding perspective or a wall of expressionistic works by Vincent van Gogh. The gallery at the end of the installation, now painted gray-green, displays Cubist paintings and early 20th-Century abstractions, while an adjacent gallery is devoted to bold figurative works by Matisse and members of the School of Paris.

Other projects are under consideration, Campbell said. One high-priority item is an orientation area that would provide an audio-visual introduction to the museum. A scholarly catalogue or a series of publications on the collection also has a prime position on her agenda. The books Campbell envisions would contain a reproduction of each artwork, a record of its ownership, exhibition and publication, and a critical essay about the object.

*

About 150,000 visitors come to the Simon museum each year to see long-term installations and changing exhibitions. “We are working only with a permanent collection. It’s not as if a lot of new material is flowing in,” Campbell said. “But we try to interpret it in new ways and every time we do that, it’s a different exhibition.”

The majority of works in “A Salute to the Ferus Gallery” (through March 13) are on view for the first time at the Simon, she said. “Seascape/Cityscape: The Art of Lyonel Feininger” (through Jan. 9) features a recent gift to the museum--a 1937 painting of a tugboat.

Francisco Goya’s “The Disasters of War” are on exhibition (until May 8) for the first time in nearly a decade. The series of etchings--created from 1810-20 in response to a bloody struggle between Spain and France--is one of only two complete sets of working proofs printed during the artist’s lifetime, Campbell said. Another current exhibition, “Fragonard in Naples: Drawings After the Old Masters” (through May 22) features 22 drawings executed in 1761-62 by French artist Jean Honore Fragonard during a journey to Italy.

Coming exhibitions include a show of 30 paintings, watercolors and prints by Wassily Kandinsky, scheduled for Jan. 13 through Sept. 11, 1994. But the most eagerly awaited event is the November, 1994, opening of an exhibition of the entire Galka Scheyer collection. Scheyer, a German emigre who lived in Hollywood in the 1930s and early 1940s, amassed more than 300 modern artworks, primarily by the Blue Four--Feininger, Kandinsky, Alexei Jawlensky and Paul Klee. Her collection in 1953 was entrusted to the Pasadena Art Institute, which evolved into the Pasadena Art Museum. Simon took over the Scheyer collection in 1974 when he bailed out the financially troubled museum.

All this activity keeps the Simon collection alive and inspires repeat visits to the museum, but it’s not the central issue, according to Campbell. “I believe my first duty is to make sure the art is here and well taken care of for the next generation,” she said. “Every one of the objects has an incredible history. But they not only tell you a great deal about the societies that produced them, they are also beautiful to look at.”