Passages to a Higher Plane

The Norton Simon Museum has been resting on its laurels for the past 25 years--occupying the same building in Pasadena and displaying the same art collection. That is not a bad thing. Simon, who is widely credited as America’s best art collector since World War II, amassed a 12,000-piece holding of European, Asian and American art, and while highlights are consistently shown, only 10% of the collection is on view at any one time.

But cultural landmarks exclusively devoted to permanent collections tend to be taken for granted, no matter how often the artworks are rotated and temporary exhibitions are installed. At the Simon, even visitors who don’t think they’ve “been there, done that” after a single visit sometimes postpone a return trip to the museum, thinking it will always be there, exactly as they remember it.

Such perceptions die hard, but the Norton Simon Museum of three years ago or even three months ago is not the Norton Simon Museum of today. And visitors who return to the museum a few months from now will be in for another surprise.

Simon took charge of the debt-ridden Pasadena Art Museum in 1974 and reopened it in 1975, primarily as a showcase for his own collection. He pumped more than $1 million into physical improvements during the closure but made few changes thereafter--partly because he was ill for a decade before his death in 1993. By then, the facility was looking dated and a little shabby. In 1996, the museum’s trustees launched a $5-million renovation of the building and grounds, designed by architect Frank O. Gehry with landscape architect Nancy Goslee Powers. While maintaining regular public hours, the museum has been an ever-changing work in progress.

It still is. With the project about six months shy of completion, visitors are being routed through a temporary side entrance, the Degas gallery is awaiting a new stone floor and the main portion of the Asian galleries is in the process of installation. But the final countdown is approaching.

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One of the most spectacular elements of the renovation--a dramatically reconfigured and refurbished series of galleries for Indian and Southeast Asian art--is expected to be done by the first of May. The redesigned and expanded gardens are scheduled to be finished around the first of June. And finally, a grand opening is tentatively planned for the end of September--to allow time for fine-tuning, said Sara Campbell, the museum’s director of art.

Meanwhile, one can already see striking changes. Among them is the heightened visibility of Asian art. Although the museum is best known for its Impressionist and Old Master paintings--which occupy most of the upper floor--the first artwork visitors will see when the front entrance reopens is a towering 9th century sandstone Buddha from Thailand. Placed in the center of the spacious lobby and raised well above eye level, the sculpture has a commanding presence.

“Installing the great Buddha in the front hall was something I insisted on,” said Pratapaditya Pal, an internationally renowned scholar who was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s curator of Indian and Southeast Asian art from 1970 to 1995 and is currently cataloging the Simon’s Asian holdings. “The Buddha sets a tremendously spiritually moving tone for the entire museum. As people come in, they are overwhelmed by it. We have raised the figure two or three feet higher than it was before. As a result, he looks down on you and carries that whole room.”

Giving the place of honor to the Buddha also delivers a message about the museum’s Asian collection. Formerly housed in an upstairs wing, the Asian galleries have been moved to the lower floor. Although the artworks will be lodged in more spacious quarters, they might appear to have been relegated to a secondary position, so the Buddha is an important bit of symbolism, Pal said.

Not far away, around the entrance to the new spiral stairwayleading to the lower floor, are large stone figures and smaller bronzes depicting Buddha and different incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. “They represent the entire range of the collection--Indian, Cambodian and Himalayan--so they provide visitors with a little orientation to the galleries downstairs and lead them down into the well,” Pal said.

“The well” is a cylindrical form that wraps around the stairway. Unlike the former, open staircase, Gehry’s design is a sculptural enclosure that reveals nothing of the galleries below. Positioned directly below a skylight, the walled staircase unfurls into a curved backdrop for a monumental Northern Indian sandstone, “Serpent King,” made around AD 100. Additional surprises await visitors as they venture into the galleries.

A rectangular room near the foot of the stairs holds pots, drums and statuary, mostly made during the 1st and 2nd centuries. Focusing on the earliest pieces in the collection, the display anchors a roughly chronological progression of art. When the installation is complete, about 300 examples of the 600-piece Asian collection will be on view in the galleries and adjacent gardens, assistant curator Christine Knoke said. That’s a considerable increase from the former installation of about 180 indoor pieces and an additional 25 works outside.

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Works from various locales will be mingled to emphasize thematic similarities and encourage visitors to compare formal differences, she said. In a gallery that is already open to the public, scenes from the life of Buddha are hung on one wall, while groups of related figures are exhibited in other areas.

The approach makes sense for Simon’s holdings, but it also helps viewers connect artworks that are generally presented in a nationalistic or geographic context, Pal said. “Norton Simon only purchased a few pieces of Chinese art, but they include a wonderful Buddhist torso of about the 6th century. Obviously, I couldn’t create a Chinese room, but I have put the torso next to other Buddhas, from Cambodia and India, from roughly the same period. As a result, people can compare them. As you go through the galleries of other periods, you see the sculpture similarly integrated,” he said.

The scheme might seem quite logical--and obvious--for a collection that covers a vast territory in Asia. Not so, Pal said. “I think this is the only museum anywhere in America or Europe, or for that matter Asia, where you can come in and see--within a chronological framework--works from different geographical areas, which are related by their religious context. After all, the art is either Hindu or Buddhist, whether it’s done in India or Cambodia.

“When these sculptures were created, there was no Thailand, there was no Cambodia,” he said. “These are all modern political state concepts. So from that point of view, I think viewers coming to the Norton Simon Museum will get a refreshing insight into the collection.”

Pal is delighted with the galleries Gehry has designed. “I think this is the finest space for Indian art anywhere in the world,” he said. “Frank knew exactly what I wanted, and he delivered. There was no disagreement, no request to change. It worked out very, very well.”

The central component--to be opened in about six weeks--is a corridor lined with square columns, which replace two parallel walls and appear to expand the space. Both the columns and the floors are clad in Indian sandstone of variegated earth tones--mostly red, violet and yellowish browns--which are echoed on the gallery walls. Two-sided glass cases built into four interior walls will hold small objects, allowing them to be seen from both front and back.

The cases will accommodate many pieces that have been in storage, Knoke said. Additionally, enclosing the veranda on the west side of the museum provides about 1,000 feet of new floor space. Enclosed with large windows, this room “brings the outside in,” Pal said. Visitors can look out onto the surrounding garden and a covered walkway, where more sculptures will be installed.

The project finally coming to fruition has been “a rare opportunity to be able to install such an extraordinary collection in what I think is an extraordinary space,” Pal said. “Most scholars who see it say they get the feeling that they are entering an Indian temple.

“I believe that one shouldn’t be obvious in trying to create phony architectural things in a museum. You can’t create a temple here. A museum, by definition, is an artificial space for showing art that was never created for museums. But I think once you come into this museum, stand in that colonnade and get surprises as you turn corners, you get the feeling of the space within a temple.”

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The rest of the museum’s interior has been transformed by new floors of wood or stone, fresh color schemes, raised ceilings and greatly improved lighting, including several new skylights. Upstairs, galleries built with rounded contours have been squared off--a change that slightly decreased the floor space but increased usable wall space.

Downstairs, adjacent to the Asian section, five small galleries for temporary exhibitions have been converted to two large galleries and one smaller room with wood floors and white walls. Currently displaying one portion of the four-part exhibition “Radical P.A.S.T.: Contemporary Art & Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974,” the space will be used for shows drawn from the museum’s collection.

Access to the museum has been somewhat limited during the renovation, and the artworks have been on the move as construction proceeded, wing by wing. When the first refurbished section opened, in December 1996, it displayed Old Master paintings. Now the Old Masters are lodged on the opposite side of the museum.

“Until October, hardly anything was where we really wanted it to be,” Campbell said.

The situation has settled down, but it’s far from static. In some areas that appear to be completely finished, curator Gloria Williams is thinking about additional changes. Galleries now painted in distinctively different colors will be repainted in a relatively subtle progression of soft greens or light ochres, with a punch of burgundy at one end, where the early Italian paintings are displayed. Temporary walls in the center of the Renaissance gallery--erected to create more display space during construction--will be removed, and the tapestry gallery may be converted to a Flemish room, Williams said.

She is also working on a plan to highlight “The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance,” the Italian Rococo painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo that serves as the centerpiece of a large gallery and the focal point of an entire wing. One possibility is to hang the painting on a new wall, in front of the existing wall, so that it projects into the room. “It deserves to have special attention in its own space, where the other paintings don’t have to compete with it,” Williams said.

Projects such as this and reframing other paintings in the collection are part of the perpetual process of maintaining and upgrading the museum, Campbell said. But bigger projects are in the offing as well. The auditorium, which hasn’t been used for many years, will be refurbished and technologically updated--after the rest of the renovation is done.

Meanwhile, in the gardens, the former rectangular reflecting pool has been replaced with the bed of a meandering stream, to be lined with waterlilies and other aquatic plants. Many trees have been planted, and there are new pathways where visitors can stroll and rest on craggy stone “benches,” discovered in a quarry near Fresno. Similar large stones will be used as pedestals for outdoor sculptures by Aristide Maillol, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Robert Morris and John Mason, among other artists.

Plans to build a teahouse in the garden have been delayed, so refreshments will be dispensed from carts, similar to those at the Getty Center, Campbell said. But it isn’t time for a cappuccino break yet. Just as the activity was beginning to level off, along came another upheaval. Instead of leaving the grounds at the entrance intact, as originally planned, the area is getting a new look--with stone walkways and informal landscaping in keeping with the rear gardens.*