Sculpture Garden lake - Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena / Ladd & Kelsey Architects

© ArchEyes

In 1969, Ladd & Kelsey designed the award-winning, thought-provoking – and controversial – Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to house the institution’s large and prestigious contemporary art collection. At the time, Pasadena was so influential in contemporary art that its only American rival was lower Manhattan. The museum was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum.

Norton Simon Art Museum Technical Information

It was late in the afternoon and the coppery plum colored shadows on the mountains were repeated in the tile of the museum. It was so exciting

– Edith Heath1

Norton Simon Art Museum Photographs
Exterior Facade

© ArchEyes

Garden

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Lake at Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena / Ladd & Kelsey Architects

© ArchEyes

Sculture

© ArchEyes

Facade - Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena / Ladd & Kelsey Architects

© ArchEyes

Sculpture Garden - Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena / Ladd & Kelsey Architects

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Entrance -Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena / Ladd & Kelsey Architects

© ArchEyes

Text by the Ladd and Kelsey Foundation2

The undulating exterior — influenced by Pasadena’s Arts & Crafts tradition, Beaux-Arts City Hall, and streamline and modern design –changes with the light of day. Ladd & Kelsey’s signature white concrete base and white-finished roof crisply contrasted with the blue Southern California sky and green landscape. The curvilinear tiled exterior, a Ladd & Kelsey hallmark, is comprised of 115,000 Edith Heath-designed custom brick red and onyx glazed 5 x 15-inch tiles. They embrace the palette of the San Gabriel Mountains above the structure and their mood still changes with the day’s light. For Edith Heath, the project earned her the prestigious AIA Industrial Arts Medal award from the American Institute of Architects in 1971. This was the first time the award was granted to a non-architect.

The avant-garde interior architecture housed equally avant-garde contemporary art. The interior plan was imagined as a series of pavilions by which one crosses glass-enclosed “bridges” with views to nature outside before entering another Pavillion. The interior was designed to be an unconventional space to house unconventional art by the likes of Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, and Ellsworth Kelly, among others.

A debt-laden Pasadena Art Museum was taken over by the industrialist Norton Simon in 1974, leading it to become the Norton Simon Museum. The structure’s original interior architecture was altered in 1977 by Craig Ellwood and largely lost to a 1996-1999 Frank Gehry redesign. The classical modern reflecting pool central to the plan was demolished in 1999 and replaced with an organic landscaping redesign by Nancy Goslee Power.

History of the Museum

Norton Simon died on June 2, 1993. As a tribute to her husband, Jennifer Jones Simon oversaw the major renovation of the interior galleries from 1996-1999 by the noted architect Frank O. Gehry. The sculpture garden was remodeled by Nancy Goslee Power, and the renovation completed in 2000 when the Museum’s Theater was remodeled by Arthur Gensler, Jr. & Associates.

Norton Simon Art Museum Image Gallery
About Ladd & Kelsey Architects

Thornton Ladd (1924-2010) and John Kelsey (1925-2012) firm operated from 1959 till 1982. Despite its lack of recognition today, the Ladd & Kelsey name is tied to some of the iconic buildings of Los Angeles modern architecture.
Other works from Ladd & Kelsey Architects  

Notes
  1. The curved exterior walls of the museum are lined with 115,000 vertically stacked umber-colored tiles designed by ceramicist Edith Heath.
  2. Ladd & Kelsey Foundation

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